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

[dexters]

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.

And or you want to shut them out so you specifically exclude them from the research ring without having to decline DOF.

 

[jjkrause84]

I guess I'm an old-timer, having started with Civ 2 back in the 90s. I played Civ 2 (and Fantastic Worlds) fanatically in middle and high school.....Civ probably kept me out of Harvard and Berkeley!

Anyway, I'm one of the many old folks who hated Civ 5 and, as such, have absolutely no faith whatsoever in Civ 6. As far as I'm concerned they've lost the plot. The designers seem to have no idea what actually made Civ so great in the first place. I can distinctly recall playing Civ 5 and thinking to myself "it is like the designers had heard of Civ...but never actually played it before".

I think Civ 6 will inevitably continue to march down the small empire, casual design route that has won Civ so many new fans since Civ 5. Sadly this means there is practically nothing in between Paradox and mobile nonsense when it comes to strategy games. That crucial middle ground that Civ occupied is now gone. I will not be buying Civ 6, unless it shows up at a very steep discount.

 

[Haig]

jjkrause84:
They have axed the global happiness thing, now it's city based, plus there's stuff a Civ4 might appreciate: goverments, war weariness, destroying tile improvements with bombers, generally seems to have more interesting and complex mechanics.
Check out what fans here think when it's released and give it a change.

 

[Ricci]

What is showing now is that there is quite a number of old Civ players who were driven away from the series by CiV. I am one of those. I want to build an empire and not quit after the 4th city. For me that was the major flaw with CiV. I don't care very much for victory conditions or an AI "playing to win" because from CIV 1 on after having won the game several times I usually only started a game and quit when it was clear I was the dominant force and would win the game anyway.
I vividly remember the discussions when CiV was released and when this criticism slowed down it was not because CiV had become a great Civ game but because the critical old-timers did not return anymore. Sullla's analysis from the early days is still pretty much spot on. Now with the hope for a great CiVI they come back and so does the criticism for CiV.

Yeap, this is pretty much it. Plus, this forum is not at all representative of the civ gaming community, CiV has steam for numbers, I know at least 4 other fanatical 'Old timers' which still play CIV4 and never once sniff into these forums.

 

[jjkrause84]

jjkrause84:
They have axed the global happiness thing, now it's city based, plus there's stuff a Civ4 might appreciate: goverments, war weariness, destroying tile improvements with bombers, generally seems to have more interesting and complex mechanics.
Check out what fans here think when it's released and give it a change.

Well I guess I'll wait and see how it turns out. How can I turn down someone named Haig!?

(I'm a First World War historian, which comes with certain obligations, you see....)

 

[Acken]

The main issue with tech trading is that first you can trade it multiple times to different people. This makes tech too valuable. Then it creates this gamey behavior where you tech stuff no longer on your needs but by the value the tech has on the market.

 

[Felis Renidens]

I liked tech trading in the first two games. In Civ4 it came to late to be useful. In 5 there are not that many things to trade anyway, and in 6 half your 'techs' will actually be civics. But then, I like an easy victory.

 

[jjkrause84]

The main issue with tech trading is that first you can trade it multiple times to different people. This makes tech too valuable. Then it creates this gamey behavior where you tech stuff no longer on your needs but by the value the tech has on the market.

Sometimes, maybe, but there is an enormous risk in doing so. What if no one will trade with you? It has happened to me plenty of times.

Risk and reward. That is what made the system work.

 

[Ryika]

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.

That doesn't matter, you continue to generate value from something for yourself, while you split value among other players. You always win more than every other player you trade with.
Realistically you as a player don't even have that "choice" anyway. For practical purposes you HAVE to tech-trade, because if you don't, then everybody else tech-trades (and does so semi-competently) and you're the only one left behind.

The important thing is that you don't "give anything away", you duplicate. Therefor your supply is unlimited (technically it's of course limited by the amount of Civs that you can trade with).

That's especially true when you're the first one to get a tech. You can then trade it in with every single other player, yes, they all get that tech, but you get value equal to that tech x the number of players available (and value that is actual value, not "infinite" value as technologies are).

It just can't be balanced.

/edit:
Imagine you could build an improvement on silver and then trade that silver with every other player on the map while still having silver for yourself.
And then imagine if everybody just traded all their luxury goods with each other without ever losing their own sources. That's what tech trading is.

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).

Well, Research Agreements cost Gold for both players, that's a reason. Mechanically it's "Trade Gold and the risk that a war may break the agreement before it's finished for science".

The Gold Cost wasn't high enough to discourage spamming research agreements throughout most of the lifespan of the game, that's certainly true, but research agreements are not free.

 

[historix69]

I guess I'm an old-timer, having started with Civ 2 back in the 90s. I played Civ 2 (and Fantastic Worlds) fanatically in middle and high school.....Civ probably kept me out of Harvard and Berkeley!

Anyway, I'm one of the many old folks who hated Civ 5 and, as such, have absolutely no faith whatsoever in Civ 6. As far as I'm concerned they've lost the plot. The designers seem to have no idea what actually made Civ so great in the first place. I can distinctly recall playing Civ 5 and thinking to myself "it is like the designers had heard of Civ...but never actually played it before".

I think Civ 6 will inevitably continue to march down the small empire, casual design route that has won Civ so many new fans since Civ 5. Sadly this means there is practically nothing in between Paradox and mobile nonsense when it comes to strategy games. That crucial middle ground that Civ occupied is now gone. I will not be buying Civ 6, unless it shows up at a very steep discount.

Civ5 is not so bad if you use mods or make your own mod and try out alternative game rules. A lot of things can be changed with a few lines of code.

 

[Acken]

Civ contact through trading and learning techs is also already repreeented by the discounts you get on a tech for ebery civ that already know the tech. It acts as a catch up mecanic which is good

 

[historix69]

That doesn't matter, you continue to generate value from something for yourself, while you split value among other players. You always win more than every other player you trade with.
Realistically you as a player don't even have that "choice" anyway. For practical purposes you HAVE to tech-trade, because if you don't, then everybody else tech-trades (and does so semi-competently) and you're the only one left behind.

The important thing is that you don't "give anything away", you duplicate. Therefor your supply is unlimited (technically it's of course limited by the amount of Civs that you can trade with).

That's especially true when you're the first one to get a tech. You can then trade it in with every single other player, yes, they all get that tech, but you get value equal to that tech (and value that is actual value, not "infinite" value as technologies are).

It just can't be balanced.

I remember Tech-Trading in Civ3 (15 years ago) ... Research Times in the beginning were hard, sometimes reaching the 40 turns limit (depending on settings) ... there were 8-10 new Techs researched by civs at the same time. If you researched a Tech, you had only one turn to trade the Tech with all other civs to get the other 7-9 Techs, which you realistically could not all research on your own, or to get cash to later buy the techs ... if you had bad luck, you could trade your new tech only with a few AI civs and the next turn some AI had spread it to all AI civs making it impossible for you to sell it ...

Nevertheless it was a nice system where you usually only had to pay for missing Research Points when you already had started reseaching a tech. 50% researched = 50% discount when you buy it. The same applied for Map Trading.

 

[rastak]

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).

It has the same purpose it had in 1-4. What exactly are you talking about?

 

[jjkrause84]

It has the same purpose it had in 1-4. What exactly are you talking about?

Practically every mechanic in Civ 5 disincentivizes expansion. In Civ 2-4 expansion through war made great sense: you pick up well-developed cities and weaken your enemies. In Civ 5 I cringe when I take a city because all it does is tank your happiness and SP progression.

In most circumstances your best bet is to never conquer any enemy cities ever.

 

[jjkrause84]

Civ5 is not so bad if you use mods or make your own mod and try out alternative game rules. A lot of things can be changed with a few lines of code.

See, that to me is a horrible argument. If you have to mod a game to make it worth while then the game is broken.

(Then again, I came up in a time when modding and patching didn't even exist....you bought a game and that's what the game was, for all eternity)

 

[rastak]

Practically every mechanic in Civ 5 disincentivizes expansion. In Civ 2-4 expansion through war made great sense: you pick up well-developed cities and weaken your enemies. In Civ 5 I cringe when I take a city because all it does is tank your happiness and SP progression.

In most circumstances your best bet is to never conquer any enemy cities ever.

I don't. It just might be you. I like smaller empires but I've had large. Just like in 3&4 you mitigate the drag they have set on expansion. Do it well and you can have lots of cities.

 

[Drakarska]

I liked tech trading in the first two games. In Civ4 it came to late to be useful. In 5 there are not that many things to trade anyway, and in 6 half your 'techs' will actually be civics. But then, I like an easy victory.

This puzzles me. Would you care to explain this further? CIV TT was extremely useful all the way through to the modern era, especially if you were in a tight run for a space VC.

In vanilla BNW, I would agree with you. However, modded ( and hats off to to the wizardry of Acken ) made TT a more essential tactic..

 

[AriochIV]

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.

You might be reluctant to trade away your best military techs, but otherwise it is free... you can trade the same tech to 5 different civs for 5 different techs. If you don't constantly trade techs, you'll fall hopelessly behind the other civs that do. And it creates a perverse incentive to research not the tech you want, but the tech no one else has. Trade agreements and science boosts or credits are a much better way to go.

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).

Sure there is... research agreements are quite expensive and require friendly relations (which I find I often don't have).

 

[Felis Renidens]

This puzzles me. Would you care to explain this further? CIV TT was extremely useful all the way through to the modern era, especially if you were in a tight run for a space VC.

In vanilla BNW, I would agree with you. However, modded ( and hats off to to the wizardry of Acken ) made TT a more essential tactic..

The reason is that I like an easy win, so I usually play on difficulty levels where I get ahead of the AI fast. In the beginning of a game they will still get techs that I don't have. By the time I reach paper in Civ4 there are few things that they can teach me. That's why I had the qualification that I like an easy win.

 

[chrisge]

These mods are like applying lube to try and bash a square peg into a round hole. Well done obviously, according to many the peg is now in the hole, but Civ was never meant to be Panzer General as Jon Shafer wanted. Why are we still heading down this path!?

How would you represent the extensive and multi pronged forces of Israel in Civ these days? I agree that 1UPT is a fine game style (if the Civ map could be about 100 times larger!).

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.

Thanks Ricci.