Hello, my name is John and I'm addicted to Civilization 3.
I'd say the game is 90% the perfect strategy game.
So when I heard about Civ 4 I was like a kid waiting for Christmas. Some of the new things I read about sounded very good (religion and the representation of towns on the map showing improvements etc). Some of the things I'd add to Civ 3 to make it 100% were not included but maybe thats because I want other things from the game than the mainstream public (I want strategy game to resemble RL politics and war as closely as possible with large sized armies on each side - even if it comes at the price of game speed). If each turn takes 5 minutes to process I don't care, such is chess and Civ 3 plays to me like modern chess.
I am finding though that even though this game promised to improve on a formula I rate so highly that I'm put off by the size of the units.
<At this point, please somebody tell me that it will be possible to mod the units to a smaller and less obnoxious size?>
Scale - Obviously a worker cannot be scaled to the city because you wouldn't be able to see them. But, if we need to make them visable does that mean we should abandon any idea of scale and make them huge?
When you make a game with units that represent something, it's important that everytime you galnce at that unit you are convinced it is the thing it should represent. Nobody thinks "I'll move the swordsman marker here and the worker marker there" - You think "I'll move him there and then ask my swordsman to go there". Scale is important in fooling the brain into taking for granted that this is a worker, not a worker marker.
When I see a huge worker near a city my brain can't compute it. It looks like some radiation leak has resulted in a giant. It takes me out of the game I was imersed in and makes me feel like I'm playing some stupid kids game. It's something like that that'll make me play something else and eventually loose all interest in Civ 4 and it's something like that which was never present in Civ 3.
Maybe they got lucky in Civ 3 and got the size right (or about right), now they seem to have forgotten why they chose that size (and why it worked so well) and have changed one of the things that didn't need changing.
If you bake a cake and it taste good but next time you want it to taste better the one thing you don't do is change the core ingredients. You think of ways to add to what you already had without making your cake taste worse. The unit size in Civ 4 is the same as if they doubled the quantity of flour used in their cakes and now produce some crappy cakes that have lots of color but taste like ****.
I'd say the game is 90% the perfect strategy game.
So when I heard about Civ 4 I was like a kid waiting for Christmas. Some of the new things I read about sounded very good (religion and the representation of towns on the map showing improvements etc). Some of the things I'd add to Civ 3 to make it 100% were not included but maybe thats because I want other things from the game than the mainstream public (I want strategy game to resemble RL politics and war as closely as possible with large sized armies on each side - even if it comes at the price of game speed). If each turn takes 5 minutes to process I don't care, such is chess and Civ 3 plays to me like modern chess.
I am finding though that even though this game promised to improve on a formula I rate so highly that I'm put off by the size of the units.
<At this point, please somebody tell me that it will be possible to mod the units to a smaller and less obnoxious size?>
Scale - Obviously a worker cannot be scaled to the city because you wouldn't be able to see them. But, if we need to make them visable does that mean we should abandon any idea of scale and make them huge?
When you make a game with units that represent something, it's important that everytime you galnce at that unit you are convinced it is the thing it should represent. Nobody thinks "I'll move the swordsman marker here and the worker marker there" - You think "I'll move him there and then ask my swordsman to go there". Scale is important in fooling the brain into taking for granted that this is a worker, not a worker marker.
When I see a huge worker near a city my brain can't compute it. It looks like some radiation leak has resulted in a giant. It takes me out of the game I was imersed in and makes me feel like I'm playing some stupid kids game. It's something like that that'll make me play something else and eventually loose all interest in Civ 4 and it's something like that which was never present in Civ 3.
Maybe they got lucky in Civ 3 and got the size right (or about right), now they seem to have forgotten why they chose that size (and why it worked so well) and have changed one of the things that didn't need changing.
If you bake a cake and it taste good but next time you want it to taste better the one thing you don't do is change the core ingredients. You think of ways to add to what you already had without making your cake taste worse. The unit size in Civ 4 is the same as if they doubled the quantity of flour used in their cakes and now produce some crappy cakes that have lots of color but taste like ****.
