Old timer's, what are your thoughts so far?

[ringwraith18]

Cautiously optimistic. I like what I've seen so far, but will wait to see what the later game looks like.

 

[chrisge]

It's called CivFANATICS not because we like baseball... no passion, no fanatic. With passion comes inevitably some clashes and sparks when steel meets steel. Some people here are just a little too sensitive about the sparks and the sound of metal... PCBS at it's best, I guess.

Candor dat Viribus Alas.

Are you telling me that I didn't get my Civ 4 Diplomatic Victory? They were always a bugger to get. Answer my question from my previous post that I posed to you rather than rattling your sword!

Thanks. Ok, yes Jon Shafer did really say Panzer General because he was a huge fan and that is what he based Civ 5 on. So he created a game with hexes of something like 100 squared kms that only one unit can be on. This ruins the immersion for me completely.

So older Civ players love Civ so much that they have adapted to a game that was a bad design to begin with but was saved to some degree in the end. But now we need to continue down a path that is acknowledged to be a bad idea Aristos?

When you are used to 25 years of a MUPT system it is not easy for everyone to make the transition.

 

[historix69]

Religions and beliefs being unique is a gamey element, but no more so than Wonders being unique.

While loosing a Wonder Race is hard, we are used to it since Civ1.
In Civ4 there was a Tech-Race for the 7 uniform Religions.
Both is not really a problem since you can conquer the cities with WoW/Religion.

Religion in Civ5 is different since it lets you pick individual beliefs which may give you nice advantages depending on your play style and geographic region. If you loose the race, you cannot just conquer a holy city to compensate. If you loose the religious race, you have to wait for the crap religions from AI to come to your cities and accept them. If you play with 34 civs, chance is high that you loose the religious race unless you play a religious civ or start next to a Faith natural wonder or Faith CS. So in most games Religion is just a feature which is excluded for you which creates a bad feeling.

 

[AriochIV]

If you loose the race, you cannot just conquer a holy city to compensate. If you loose the religious race, you have to wait for the crap religions from AI to come to your cities and accept them.

I agree that Civ V was unnecessarily inflexible in this regard, and I hope this is improved in Civ VI.

If you play with 34 civs, chance is high that you loose the religious race unless you play a religious civ or start next to a Faith natural wonder or Faith CS.

The game is not designed to be played with 34 civs, so this isn't really a compelling complaint.

 

[Aristos]

Are you telling me that I didn't get my Civ 4 Diplomatic Victory? They were always a bugger to get. Answer my question from my previous post that I posed to you rather than rattling your sword!

A little confused by your message, but I am guessing your question was if we, the old guard, needed to adapt to the new mechanics even if we may acknowledge them as bad ideas? A sort of resignation/conformism?

My answer is: to adapt is not wrong. To resign one self to mediocrity is. Civ5 vanilla was mediocre, heck, it was the very definition of mediocrity. From my point of view, both G&K and especially BNW took Civ5 out of the mediocre realm and well into good/great. AFAIK, many of the Old Guard stopped right after vanilla and never looked back. Others tried to keep the option open, and watch the developments as close as possible... adapt, so to speak, but not accept mediocrity. BNW is not mediocre; it has many of the elements of the original, but made to work in at least partial harmony with the new mechanisms that made BNW very good.

I know you are coming from MUPT. It's not easy to transition, I know. But TBH, xUPT is not a bad idea; the original implementation was, in fact, horrible and mediocre. I think xUPT, and 1UPT in particular, was "ahead of the engine", so to speak. Civilization and 1UPT can ONLY work in one specific setup: HUGE maps. For that, you need 64 bits, period. Civilization would shine with 1UPT, gigantic maps and completely decentralized cities. I am not talking the district system, no, that is only half a step towards true great Civ/1UPT marriage. I am talking something like the Shogun/Napoleon TW maps, where almost everything was outside the city center. I am not talking 3 tiles radius for cities, I am talking entire regions where one big city is the political center, but everything else is spread around in the region, as true towns, where resources are extracted, transformed, produced, etc.

In such an environment, 1UPT (with good AI) would shine. Districts is a good step towards that, and it may work. I am a little disappointed in the fact that they decided, once again, to go half step, and go the easy shortcut, stepping back into pseudo-xUPT (it's pseudo because once you can build corps/armies, we are back to 1UPT, only that now your unit is called corps or army).

Bottom line, 1UPT is one strong example of bad implementation as opposed to bad feature.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I've played Civ since it was released by MicroProse in 1991. I was a beta tester for a subsequent version and its expansion. Civ V had some warts, as did Civ IV, III, II... Civ VI will be no different. The AI will never be good enough until we all have quantum computers, there will be jarring anomalies and plenty of ahistorical moments. OTOH, the game has become more rich with each iteration and it's done so without the need for micro managing at all but the highest difficulty levels. Yes, I'll be buying Civ VI, that it is being published at all is a pleasant surprise.

binhthuy! I'm so happy to see you! I had heard an awful rumor that you had left us all forever for the great Civ map upstairs.

I'm so glad that rumor was wrong.

 

[rastak]

I've played Civ since it was released by MicroProse in 1991. I was a beta tester for a subsequent version and its expansion. Civ V had some warts, as did Civ IV, III, II... Civ VI will be no different. The AI will never be good enough until we all have quantum computers, there will be jarring anomalies and plenty of ahistorical moments. OTOH, the game has become more rich with each iteration and it's done so without the need for micro managing at all but the highest difficulty levels. Yes, I'll be buying Civ VI, that it is being published at all is a pleasant surprise.

It has never been healthier as a franchise. Oct 21st is circled on the calendar and the week off of work has already been scheduled.

 

[Westwall]

While loosing [sic] a Wonder Race is hard, we are used to it since Civ1.

I still think it's silly to lose a wonder just because a civilization you may not even have met yet managed to finish that wonder before you.

There should be major benefits for the civilization that finishes it first and minor benefits for whoever finishes it after.

 

[EricTheGreat12]

It's pretty obvious that the developers are making this game with the "old timers" in mind. With graphics as well as mechanics, this looks more similar to Civ 4 and its predecessors than it does to Civ 5 (although I do know that they incorporated some elements from BNW). None the less, they seem to want to regain the previous Civ fans who really didn't appreciate Civ 5 and it's significant leap forward compared to its predecessor, but not a lot of attention is given to those who started the series by playing Civ 5.

 

[cseanny]

It's pretty obvious that the developers are making this game with the "old timers" in mind.

I'm an old timer that disliked Civ V immensely. I wasn't a fan of 1UPT (seriously flawed - game breakingly bad), Global Happiness, science is population, a very slow game, City states, a crippled AI, the Tech tree (if you could call it that), bad UI, etc. I don't know man. V just didn't seem like a strategical building game anymore and fell more under a "board game" or "simulator".

Having said that, Civ 6 imo is most definitely not geared at "old timers". There are way more features coming back than being removed. In addition they are making what I think are screwy decisions with roads and trade-routes, workers/builders which disappear over time. Really? Micro-management is a key part of building your empire.

I'd say it's moving as far from Civ IV as possible - which is fine. There's a huge fan base and 10,000s of people who play and love V. Having said this I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that Civ 6 is a vast improvement over 5. I don't care if the game if different. Different is perfectly fine as long as it's not detrimental to the overall gameplay. Give me a good game and I'll love it no matter what.

Edit: No Ratt!!?? "Round and round"

 

[malekithau]

I think we all hope Civ VI is a great game. Civ V is the most popular in the series by a long way. Over 87000 players in the last 24 hours alone and still in the top 5 most played games on Steam. The publishers are a business and, if smart, will stick with what sells. Civ 5 sold and sold very well therefore Civ VI will be more like Civ V then any of its predecessors.

I suspect that the same people who didn't move to Civ V are going to stay with Civ IV.

 

[Louis XXIV]

While loosing a Wonder Race is hard, we are used to it since Civ1.

Which is hardly a justification for either keeping something in or excluding analogous systems now.

In Civ4 there was a Tech-Race for the 7 uniform Religions.
Both is not really a problem since you can conquer the cities with WoW/Religion.

Religion in Civ5 is different since it lets you pick individual beliefs which may give you nice advantages depending on your play style and geographic region. If you loose the race, you cannot just conquer a holy city to compensate. If you loose the religious race, you have to wait for the crap religions from AI to come to your cities and accept them. If you play with 34 civs, chance is high that you loose the religious race unless you play a religious civ or start next to a Faith natural wonder or Faith CS. So in most games Religion is just a feature which is excluded for you which creates a bad feeling.

Your complaint was that it was unrealistic, not that it was frustrating. Now you're saying it was frustrating. Having it in a tech race isn't more realistic, is it? I'd actually argue this is the more realistic system.

 

[dexters]

I've played Civ since it was released by MicroProse in 1991. I was a beta tester for a subsequent version and its expansion. Civ V had some warts, as did Civ IV, III, II... Civ VI will be no different. The AI will never be good enough until we all have quantum computers, there will be jarring anomalies and plenty of ahistorical moments. OTOH, the game has become more rich with each iteration and it's done so without the need for micro managing at all but the highest difficulty levels. Yes, I'll be buying Civ VI, that it is being published at all is a pleasant surprise.

Well put & Nice to see you here binhthuy I remember you from many years ago in the Civ3 forums.

 

[jjkrause84]

Tech Trading is silly as a mechanic anyway. It creates value out of nothing, because you don't lose anything.

See, this is the problem with game design in a nutshell....not everything is about 'mechanics'! Tech trading makes perfect sense in Civ. You sail off to a distant land. They know how to do things you don't, so they teach you....and vice versa.

 

[AriochIV]

See, this is the problem with game design in a nutshell....not everything is about 'mechanics'! Tech trading makes perfect sense in Civ. You sail off to a distant land. They know how to do things you don't, so they teach you....and vice versa.

It may be realistic, but it's bad game design. Tech trading greatly accelerates everyone's acquisition of technology in a way that's hard to control, because it's essentially free.

 

[m15a]

I think a small bump in an unknown tech upon meeting a civ (with a notification instead of just being nearly invisible the way it is in Civ V) might have the right feeling while not being too damaging to gameplay.

 

[rastak]

It may be realistic, but it's bad game design. Tech trading greatly accelerates everyone's acquisition of technology in a way that's hard to control, because it's essentially free.

Yea, it created some really bad gameplay in my opinion. That it was removed is a good thing. Tech brokering became a really important tedious and boring sub game.

 

[Ricci]

I think the schism is largely the product of a very small very loud minority. So yes there is a schism among a small community of CFC posters. Civ fans as a whole? Nah. Granted schisms like this are common as we heard Civ3 was better complaints back when Civ4 was out. At the same time, that was a different era when more newbies and casuals posted in forums like this.

I think one soul who has relentlessly responded and posted to any criticism made over what CiV has become as a game, with or without valid argumentation for that matter, will truly represent a very.. very loud minority.

I think rastak was referring to me trying to speak on behalf of the older Civ community not liking Civ 5. I only meant that I had read through all the posts here, and my impression seemed to be that there are more people who disliked Civ 5 to some degree. This may be because I have a Civ 4 filter on though and I don't want to go about with a pencil and paper through this forum. I know we are a very vocal lot also.

Chrisge, your impression is sound. Can´t say a majority, but still, I would infer aprox. half the civ community got into this schism by either side at the time CiV came out. Afterwards, as years passed through, the fanbase exponentially grew, as intended of course (as many state, perhaps, into a more massive casual fanbase), making for the tens of thousand of people playing today V.
Your impression still, is probably based on so many 'inert' civ fans who, upon the imminent release of civ vi, returned to this forums to comment and learn the news, along reviving the debate between IV and V, as expectations for VI thrive among us all.
Keep yours up too, and never lay your tonge (fingers I might say here) down in this forums!!

 

[jjkrause84]

It may be realistic, but it's bad game design. Tech trading greatly accelerates everyone's acquisition of technology in a way that's hard to control, because it's essentially free.

It's not 'free' at all. It is a really interesting trade-off.....yes you can trade that tech, but is it worth the advantage you give the other player? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It was a choice with countless permutations and game-specific variables.

In Civ 5 there is never any reason to NOT enter a research agreement, unless you're about to declare war on them (which you're unlikely to do, since war has no purpose in Civ 5).

 

[ldvhl]

In Civ 5 there is never any reason to NOT enter a research agreement, unless you're about to declare war on them (which you're unlikely to do, since war has no purpose in Civ 5).

There's reasons not to enter into research agreements: you have other uses for the money, you don't think the research partner will survive through the duration of the agreement, or you think your partner will backstab you and is using the agreement as a way to sap your resources.

There are similarly plenty of purposes to wage war in V.