New Info

[aziantuntija]

You are wrong Ahriman. Wanna know why you are wrong? Because you keep on putting words in my mouth that suits your view of things, and as long as you keep doing that, you are refusing to open your eyes and see what im talking about here.


Again i werent talking about civ4 with this statement, i just made a statement:


"If you have too accurate % (or whatever) information about everything whats going to happen in a game, then its not a game anymore, then it would just be all about playing right with those given percentages, and that wouldnt be a fun at all."


I also made another statement, wich is also true btw (still not particulary talking about Civ4):


"When you add some transparency, you take away some imagination."


If your interracting with another leader and there is NO indicator or % of what the other leader is thinking of you (or perhaps even what he is propably going to do next), and lets say that the player is getting nice feedback from the leaders gestures, then, THEN the player can use his imagination and think about what the other leader is thinking and what he is propably going to do next. And humans imagination is a powrefull tool. If you replace peoples imagination with just a simple number then that surely isnt going to be as powerful tool.

Ofcourse there are lots of statics and data that player needs in order to have a fun game, but for instance, giving precise % number of how the battle propably ends (or even how much damage they can propably give to another unit when in ranged combat) is not one of them. Espesially when your going to go 1upt and your using more tactics, it just isnt a very good idea to give presice numbers of odds there, because then it wouldnt be playing a fun game, it would always be just a case of making a forced "right decision", that wouldnt be very fun. Also, once again, your not using your imagination or your brain so much if you are always given the presice odds of whats propably going to happen next in a battlefield.


Its not fun when the game is always telling you everything you "need" to know when you think you need to know it, good game designers knows how to make players use their imagination, thats why we have the fog of war for instance.


I have never said this:

Your argument that revealing such modifiers would damage the gam'se diplomacy system by making it 100% predictable is demonstrably false

What i DID say was that making the players to use their imagination instead of always just handing over all the information about everything that is going on in a game is a good thing.


I challenge you Ahriman to make a one, even just one answer to me WITHOUT putting words to my mouth. I mean you can, and you propably will disagree with me about these things, but please stop putting words in my mouth.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

"If you have too accurate % (or whatever) information about everything whats going to happen in a game, then its not a game anymore, then it would just be all about playing right with those given percentages, and that wouldnt be a fun at all."

Here I disagree VERY strongly.
The only information that should EVER be hidden in a game is how the other player makes their decisions. (the other player not being a part of the game any more than you are)

Now this is important because it depends on whether
1. The AIs are 'other players'
or
2. The AIs are 'just parts of the game'

I favor approach 1 which means that you Should have hidden 'AI decision modifiers'
but NOT hidden combat modifiers... the % should be displayed (unless there are no %)
you should also have transparent 'diplomacy modifiers' but that apply to Both the human and the AI players (like Combat modifiers apply to both Human and AI player)

"When you add some transparency, you take away some imagination."

No.. you don't
You only take away guessing,
the actual Results take away imagination...
Limited Transparency->
I Guess that X will happen because of my imagination...
X doesn't happen my 'imagination' was just taken away... you are forcing me to imagine something.

Ofcourse there are lots of statics and data that player needs in order to have a fun game, but for instance, giving precise % number of how the battle propably ends (or even how much damage they can propably give to another unit when in ranged combat) is not one of them. Espesially when your going to go 1upt and your using more tactics, it just isnt a very good idea to give presice numbers of odds there, because then it wouldnt be playing a fun game, it would always be just a case of making a forced "right decision", that wouldnt be very fun. Also, once again, your not using your imagination or your brain so much if you are always given the presice odds of whats propably going to happen next in a battlefield.

The only thing not giving a "right decision" shoud be the actions of the other player... particularly if tactics is to be important
Chess for example, the precise % number is always 'displayed' Attacking piece=100% win Always

Its not fun when the game is always telling you everything you "need" to know when you think you need to know it, good game designers knows how to make players use their imagination, thats why we have the fog of war for instance.

That is something you don't know ... in the game, and that you can only use the game to find out.

Combat odds you CAN know without looking at the game (unless they don't let you know the strength of enemy units.)

What i DID say was that making the players to use their imagination instead of always just handing over all the information about everything that is going on in a game is a good thing.

All information that the player could theoretically obtain from outside the game (ie combat odds yes, map data no) should be provided inside the game.

If the AI is simple enough that its diplomatic behavior is governed by a series of predictable numbers, then we should know what those predictable numbers are.

The Combat Model IS simple enough that its results are predicted by a series of known numbers (unless enemy promotions are hidden), so we Should know what the predicted results are.

 

[trickofthehand]

Guess no ethnically diverse units, at least not judging by the screenshots. Good thing we got all those different types of trees though...

 

[aziantuntija]

First of all Kirkkitone, it was good to see that you didnt put any words in my mouth, i appreciate that.

But im sorry to hear that you dont agree with me and Firaxis about this thing. Ive been playing civ from civ1 and i have played a bunch of other "old" games, and those old games really taught me to use my imagination.

Im not saying that the game shouldnt give any info to the player, but i do say that i rather take too few info than too much info from a game. Too few info ofcourse keeps me guessing and might be annoying in that way, but it would be heck of a lot better than giving me too much info and basicly just drowning me into it and forcing me to play it in certain way, wich would be the only "right" way because of the given info i get, if i wouldnt play it the "right way", i would just loose in a long run and playing some game just to loose intentionally is not fun either.

Overall, i think you can take almost any game in the world and you could take away some info (not too much ofcourse) from it that is given to the player and it would still be a pretty playable game, it wouldnt change TOO much. But if you add some info at the same portion, it propably would at least somewhat ruin the game, at least it wouldnt be as fun as if you were to TAKE some info from it.

If you take an example from chess it would go like this:

1. Less info: You and your opponent wouldnt see each others queens, you could only know where it is for example when it eats one of your pieces or when its your turn and your opponent didnt look like he moved any piece, then you know that queen moved.

2. More info: You and your opponent knows EXACTLY when and where each others queen is going to move nextime when it moves, each other gets this info at least 1 turn before opponent is moving his queen.

In the first example, you still have a change to track opponents queen, for example if its your turn but you didnt see your opponent moving any pieces then you can imagine that he must of been moving hes queen. Also when opponents queen eats you piece you know EXACTLY where it is, and it still is in the same position if he moves some other piece.

In the second example.. ..well that just would be quite a stupid game wouldnt it.


"When you add some transparency, you take away some imagination."

Also you can imagine what would a beautiful woman look like when shes naked, but after shes naked and "showing everything" you dont need that imagination anymore, because now you can see it with your own eyes. And it might not always be the way you imagined it, it might be better or it might as well be worse but the point is that there is no room for imagination in that thing anymore.

 

[Nicolas10]

You know, as fascinating as this diplomacy back and forth is... I'm pretty sure there are plenty of other threads to discuss it .

Maybe we can stick to what "new info" we can gleam in this thread.

 

[Nicolas10]

And speaking of new info, if you go to 1:37 of the Video you see the mouse scroll over the tech tree and linger on Trapping.

It lists it as costing 60 science, allows camps for Deer, Ivory, and Fur, and most curiously: "Also allows workers construct the Trading Post, which increases the gold output on map tiles." Interesting worker function.

 

[Thyrwyn]

...and now the Russian UB makes some sense

 

[I tech faster]

The tech tree and the worker's constructions look a lot like in Civ4. The trading post seems to replace the cottages. I guess they will evolve as you discover new techs and end up as supermarkets in the modern age.

 

[Never]

I too think that there shouldn't be any diplomatic modifiers however to compensate you should be able to click onto an advisor while in discussion with another Civ and that foreign advisor would give you some idea what to expect (and he would know more if you had spent money on espionage).

As for the 'trading post' what exactly does it mean by 'map' tiles?

 

[LDiCesare]

Anyone else think that the tech tree shows Mathematics is not a requirement of Astronomy? If that's the case, isn't that weird?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

First of all Kirkkitone, it was good to see that you didnt put any words in my mouth, i appreciate that.

But im sorry to hear that you dont agree with me and Firaxis about this thing. Ive been playing civ from civ1 and i have played a bunch of other "old" games, and those old games really taught me to use my imagination.

Me too, and I hated not knowing how things worked without finding them on some website. Firaxis has progressively made things better and better in terms of transparency.

Any time transparency for a mechanic is confusing/counterintuitive, that means
the mechanic itself is too confusing/counterintuitive (if people are complaining over losing a 99% odds battle... then design a system that doesn't HAVE 99% odds battles.. ie design a system such that single Spear never kills healthy Tank..not rarely, never)

If transparency for a mechanic is imbalancing,
the mechanic itself is imbalancing, (diplomacy modifiers in Civ 4 were an imbalanced mechanic because they only affected the AI, not human players.. ie Eiffel tower in Civ 2)

The fact that the mechanic was revealed only allowed people to See how imbalanced/confusing/counterintiuitive it was

1. Less info: You and your opponent wouldnt see each others queens, you could only know where it is for example when it eats one of your pieces or when its your turn and your opponent didnt look like he moved any piece, then you know that queen moved.
In the first example, you still have a change to track opponents queen, for example if its your turn but you didnt see your opponent moving any pieces then you can imagine that he must of been moving hes queen.

You DON'T imagine he moved his queen, you KNOW he moved his queen, if one of your unit disappears, you KNOW his Queen killed it (assuming the Queen is the only invisible unit)

In this case, if one of your units disappeared, the enemy Queen should appear there... the enemy queen should also appear if she blocks one of your moves. (in which case she probably dies unless its a pawn or a King)
The enemy queen would then disappear if the opponent moved it (since they have to move one piece, if they don't move any other, they must have moved the Queen.

Essentially the game should reveal Everything that you can figure out from the information already given (assuming you know the mechanics).

Lets say you have a city with 13 tiles, 5 give 1 production each, 3 give 2 , 1 gives 5, the rest gives none... you can 'Imagine' the city gets 16 production... or the game can just tell you, because it is stupid for you to have to add them up.

This is why combat odds MUST be revealed, unless you are also going to hide enemy unit promotions.. so you don't know how strong it Actually is.

2. More info: You and your opponent knows EXACTLY when and where each others queen is going to move nextime when it moves, each other gets this info at least 1 turn before opponent is moving his queen.

This is revealing the player's plan.. it would make the game more interesting... (to move the queen, player must announce the move 1 turn in advance)... it would make the Queen less valuable though... if it was done for ALL units, that would make an interesting chess game.

The problem in Civ4 is that only the Black (AI) player has to reveal their moves ahead of time.

In the second example.. ..well that just would be quite a stupid game wouldnt it.

No it would just be
1. harder to play
2. make the Queen less valuable

it would be stupid if the rule only applied to Black....that is the problem, visible diplomacy modifiers only apply to AIs

"When you add some transparency, you take away some imagination."

Also you can imagine what would a beautiful woman look like when shes naked, but after shes naked and "showing everything" you dont need that imagination anymore, because now you can see it with your own eyes. And it might not always be the way you imagined it, it might be better or it might as well be worse but the point is that there is no room for imagination in that thing anymore.

If you have seen a picture of the woman naked before it is not imagination, it is just recall. If you see her naked in a funhouse mirror, that you know the shape of, you can figure out what she actually looks like naked.

The game should remove 'funhouse mirrors' (complicated combat mechanics) and if they want some 'imagination' put some 'clothes' on the woman (don't reveal enemy promotions)

So instead of Str 6 v. Str 14 ....30% win
it could be Str 6 v. Str 9 to 14...40% to 30% win

or Str 6 v. Enemy unit of unknown strength???(graphic not displayed.. all you know is that its an enemy unit)

all those are acceptable

Str 6 v. Str 14... 'imagine the odds' is NOT acceptable

Also if the game doesn not give the woman any 'clothes' you should not get any 'clothes' either.


+15 diplomacy means the AI can not attack me, but I can attack the AI whenever I want is NOT acceptable.

Since it is Vital that the player be abe to attack the AI whenever they want (although there might be costs) the AI should be able to attack the player whenever IT calculates that it is worthwhile doing so.(there Are costs involved, and the player should see those costs IF the player can 'see' those costs in the game... I do know that I am paying them tribute that they will lose if they attack me... I don't know the total strength of their Military... unless I do because I have spies all around)

The game should
1. display everything you know/can calculate from knowledge of the game mechanics
2. Not have any game mechanics that apply solely to the AI/human player's decision making capability.

 

[Mr_Wonka]

A new city state : Geneva (in dark blue) ?

Also, possible volcano in the middle of that Jungle? why the crater shape

 

[aziantuntija]

Uhh i had long day today and im so tired, also i really think that it would take me all night to answer to your post Kirkkitone because my english writing can sometimes take ages Its annoying when you kind of know what do you want to say but putting it to words in foreign language (english in this case) is not always so easy.

So ill just say these things:

IMO, the new way of displaying combat odds in Civ5 IS BETTER than the presice % in Civ4 and i think i also like the less obvious diplomacy thing in Civ5.

Also, the naked woman case, i really meant that you WOULDNT have seen her naked, you IMAGINE her naked No recalling anything just imagining

Im sure somebody will think "What the **** is this guy talking about?!" if he/she wouldnt have readed our previous posts