Play the World Preview @ Gamespy

[Evie]

Yzman - Why would they be talking about CF if they are talking about new features?

Because the new features could be that it can be turned off in the editor since some fans hate it.

"FANS HATE IT OR LOVE IT" - We can't hate or love something we never heard about. Be real guys - that good ol' culture flipping they were talking about.

 

[MadScot]

Originally posted by Yzman
Why in an article about what will be new in the XP would he be explaining about city flips which has always happened? Exactly he wouldn't. They are implmenting a new civ flipping feature that can be turned on or off. I'm not sure if this means that city flipping can be turned on or off though. And and by the way, I think I did this quote thing wrong so lets just see.

Quote thing seemed to work

He would be explaining city flips because although we, as civ3 players, know it happens, it is NOT well known outside our ghetto. And it does represent a significant difference with other games, and Firaxis may wish to play up differences to establish the unique features of the game.

So he was using an EXISTING feature of civ3 as part of the effort to promote PTW to new customers.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Oda, he said fans TEND to either love or hate the feature... e.g. people hated flipping in general.

 

[JtheJackal]

He's talking about a feature in the editor not the normal game.

 

[smallstepforman]

I miss the Civ flipping aspects of Civ2. If you capture an oponents capital, sometimes their empire would split in 2. Also, if a large number of cities were in civil disorder for a long time, they would flip, forming another civilization.

That would absolutely rule in Civ3. I actually like cultural flips. It allows for Civil wars and such.

Its nice to see Firaxis implement a smoother scroll. I just hope that automatic moves have instant scroll, it gets tedious to smoothly scroll to 200 automated settlers. Instant scroll would be nice in situations like that.

 

[amadeus]

I'd like to see global warming become optional.

 

[NewGenX]

Listen to yourselves people!

Does anybody actually realize what exactly they're arguing about here? I'm going to attempt to straighten this out once and for all.

Despite the fact that the writer quoting Jeff Morris may have accidentally typed "civ" instead of "city", (which would be extremely unusual), I am willing to guarantee that it was not a typo. Look at the text that he wrote previous to that quote: "As we continued looking at the editor, Morris touched on the ability to flip civs to your side via your civ's cultural status."

Now be reasonable guys, do you really think the writer of this article would accidentally type "civ" in place of "city" twice like that?

Get over it, there is clearly no doubt about it that the new feature is flipping civs NOT cities. Besides, as Yzman has already stated perfectly, flipping cities has always been, and this article is obviously talking about NEW additions, not recapping on current Civ3 features.

-------------------------

Great, now that that's done I can get to one of my ideas that I feel Civ3 should have...

Am I the only one who says "What?!?" to myself whenever one of my Modern Armours gets destroyed by a Pikemen or Spearmen??? Doesn't that seem just a little inaccurate? huh? I'm sure others who have managed to advance their civilizations much past their rivals have noticed this rather peculiar phenomenon. Unless there are 100,000 spearmen to one tank, I can't see any damage whatsoever happening to the tank. Which brings me to my addition:

Units in the Civ games should have a sort of "Weapon type" and "Armor type" property. Meaning that every unit should have an immunity to certain types of weapons depending on their "Armor type" property. A tank would have a "Steel Frame" or "Metal Frame" type armor or something similar. Only "Explosive" type or similar weapons such as bullets and rockets can harm it. These weapon and armor types can be applied to units of all eras.

Some may argue that these "immunities" would make the game too easy, but think about it; if you are good enough to advance greatly beyond your rivals to develop weapons that are invincible to primitive weapons such as spears then you should seriously consider upping the difficulty level a tad, which is what I do. Adding this essential element to a future Civ game or perhaps even an expansion would by no means make the game too easy, it would rather add a fundamental aspect of realism that I feel would benefit the game substantially. I don't know about the rest of you but if I'm able to surpass my opponents technologically, I would want to reap the fruits of my labor by completely obliterating them with an army of machinery that can't be scratched!

As with all fundamental features, there should be an option of enabling/disabling it. Not everyone wants to play realistically!

 

[kring]

Having been interviewed a number of times for newspaper articles, misquoting happens quite frequently. I have even been quoted for stuff that I didn't say, and there was no way the person could have interpreted anything I said in one article to create the quote she put in.

That said, I would like clarification from Mike B or someone else at Firaxis before I guess what was really said/meant in that article.

 

[joespaniel]

I was at Gen-Con for a little while this weekend. Fun time.
Too bad its the last year in Milwaukee.

Most people there are into D&D and other RPGs, but I did meet some Civers and I shook hands with Sid at the booth.

To bury the Civ-flipping argument once and for all:
Yes! You can flip entire Civs in PTW!!!

OK?
Jeepers...

Thats just about all everyone was talking about this weekend.
Big freakin' deal!
And you can turn it off if you dont want it.

So relax.
Personaly, I think its really cool.

 

[Shabbaman]

Originally posted by rmsharpe
I'd like to see global warming become optional.

lol. Well, my whole masters-degree would become obsolete if it was... oh you mean in the game?

Civ flipping... I loved how civs could split in seperate civs when you captured their capital in the old civ. I think this new treat would add something. Although I'm glad that it can be disabled. Should've been with culture flipping too.

Another thing: still no news on whether it'll be a stand alone game or not?

 

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by NewGenX
Am I the only one who says "What?!?" to myself whenever one of my Modern Armours gets destroyed by a Pikemen or Spearmen??? Doesn't that seem just a little inaccurate? huh? I'm sure others who have managed to advance their civilizations much past their rivals have noticed this rather peculiar phenomenon. Unless there are 100,000 spearmen to one tank, I can't see any damage whatsoever happening to the tank.

How did the killer Spearman discussion end up here in this thread??? I feel a troll emerging.

 

[ainwood]

I don't think that the entire civ should flip. I think it wold be better if it was akin to civ (and Civ II???) where half the civ could break away when the capital was captured.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

hrm hrm, after the civ-flip is cleared up now (thanx joespaniel), can we turn to other matters?

Another new feature that Morris feels gamers will enjoy is the "stacking" of naval units, which allows units of different speeds to move together over long distance moves. "The real test of an expansion pack is if you could go back to the original one having tasted the features of the expansion," Morris claims. "This feature alone is one that nobody can go back to once they have. This always worked for land units, but now it works for naval units as well."

wait one - how did that work???? Not for me! Anyone?

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

And another serious SNAFU:

And although it won't really affect the gameplay, the team has also finished the opening animation in the last few months, which we were able to take a look at --

Who the heck wants opening animation??????

Hell, I want Wonder movies, "civ-exterminated" movies, leader generation movies (nice swordfights or so) - but I don't want a friggin' movies for double-clicking the PTW icon!!!!!!!! I want it for something I achieved!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This level of polish seemed prevalent throughout our time playtesting Play The World, and is no doubt a by-product of the excitement Morris and his team have for the game

Can we instead finally get a city list sortable by name?
Or an off-button for flipping?
Or any of the many many other things, diplo edit, better air combat, no limit on bomber range (8! what nonsense!)????????????

 

[dsirirueng]

Do0d, he was quoting Jeff Morris. When you quote somebody you don't kind of make up what someone said, that is what Jeff Morris said. If he was just recapping Jeff then he wouldn't have quoted him, but said something like "and Jeff also noted that if you have a lot of culture improvements, a nearby city might flip". Quotation marks mean that's what he said. [/B]

Well, I happen to be a professional journalist -- and this isn't going to make anybody out there like us any more than do (or don't) already -- and I have to say we misquote people all the time. Not just in paraphrasing them, but even in DIRECT QUOTES attributed to the interviewee.

This happens even when recording devices are used. There's a simple test you can do to see how wildly people can be misquoted in the press. Just look at several media accounts of a politician's or athlete's press conference where they directly quote the person. Nine times out of 10, you'll see odd little differences in the quoted statements, maybe one paper says he said "didn't" while another says he said "did not" ... but it can be much more dramatic.

Remember, these are journalists all sitting in the same room listening to the same person give a speech -- and they have RECORDING DEVICES to get it perfect -- and they still don't agree on what was actually said ... happens all the time.

 

[dsirirueng]

Am I the only one who says "What?!?" to myself whenever one of my Modern Armours gets destroyed by a Pikemen or Spearmen??? Doesn't that seem just a little inaccurate? huh? I'm sure others who have managed to advance their civilizations much past their rivals have noticed this rather peculiar phenomenon. Unless there are 100,000 spearmen to one tank, I can't see any damage whatsoever happening to the tank.

As with all fundamental features, there should be an option of enabling/disabling it. Not everyone wants to play realistically! [/B]

Of course I agree with you that if you don't want to play "realistically" you shouldn't be forced to. I would just add that there is some accuracy to having a spearman have a very slight chance of destroying a modern armor. The percentages in the game for this to happen might be too high as they stand, though. But consider reality -- there just really are *no* "civilizations" in our current "modern era" that would throw "spearmen" up against tanks. Part of our growing global interconnectedness is that even countries or factions (think al-Qaeda) that can't afford or can't build the most state-of-the-art weaponry have some fundamental understanding of how that weaponry works, and aren't likely to toss spears at Abrams tanks. So in the game, it helps to think of the spearman as a poorly-equipped but possibly resourceful (read: lucky) soldier using any means necessary to take down the superior enemy. Think Tom Hanks and Co. in <i>Saving Private Ryan</i>, blowing up Panzers with socks filled with explosive charges sneakily fixed to their treads. That's a "spearman" beating a tank. If you subscribe to this way of viewing the game, the only thing you might like to see is the units themselves change the way they look over the ages, but not their a/d/m values. In other words, dump the spear and shield once more than 50% of the civs have discovered a certain tech, and put 'em in fatigues with "burp guns" or something.

I mean, if the Indian army of 2002 featured war elephants, we'd think something was pretty odd, so the fact that it just well might in CIV3 means you have to look at these things with a bit of imagination.

But even if you don't buy that way of looking at the game, consider that even a modern armor is not "invincible". If you had really bad luck, one of the treads might snap, or you run out of gas or something as you're attacking ... climb out of the turret to see what's wrong and before you know it, a pack of Hoplites is tossing javelins at you! Or if you're really having a bad day, a pack of Ewoks ...

Again, the percentages might be screwy, but IMO it would be ludicrous to make certain units "invincible" ...

 

[WillJ]

So all you people who thought it was a misquote, do you really think there could have been exactly the same mistake four or so times, without any other mistakes? (Maybe there's reasons that that would happen, I'm not a journalism/reporting expert, but I doubt that would happen.) And that the "real" words involved talking about something already in the game? And if they were doing so to recruit new customers, why would that be the biggest darn deal about Civ 3? You think they were talking about all the new features in PTW, then decided to throw city flipping in there, just to make non-Civ 3 owners want to get the game? Seems highly unlikely to me.
Thanks joespaniel for clearing it up; I just felt like I had to say something.

 

[MAS]

AAARG YOU FOOOLS!

I can't beleve, 2 pages of posts and still noboddy seems to understand what is ment by civ flipping!

its obvius that with civ flipping he DOESN'T mean that an entire civ would flip the same way a city flips to you! That it would become a part of your civilization!

What he means is a civ would flip to YOUR SIDE in a conflict. e.g. a large world war.

And this is historically CORRECT!

The only thing that is misquoted is the word "deflict", it should be "conflict"!

 

[Jon Shafer]

Huh?

Where did you get that from?
What if you aren't at war? And why would culture matter even if you were?

*Sees scenario: Some civilization that's furious with you and hates your guts suddenly 'flips' to your side in the fight because you have high culture*

Hmm, yeah.

Jeff said that 'people tend not to like this feature' (meaning flipping in general). He couldn't have been talking about something so abstract.

 

[Hurin]

It's hilarious to watch people force the quote into their little box of desire.

"I don't like the new rule. . . so I'm going to pretend that it has been misquoted."

In my opinion, it is highly unlikely that Jeff Morris would spend that amount of time describing an already existant feature and then talking about the addition of what amounts to, essentially, a checkbox.

People need to face the real world.

As for loving or hating civ-flipping. . . I can assure you that once you stop playing the game for a few weeks/months, these additions/changes are a lot more palatable. Had I not stopped playing this game a couple months ago, I'm sure I would also be one of the reactionary change-fearers. . . but as it is now, this sounds pretty cool to me. . . especially if you can just turn it off!

H

P.S. The rough corollary of the "forcing facts to fit your view" here would be, if it *is* demonstrated that Morris was misquoted. . . all of those people who share my opinion start saying: "No! They *were* planning civ-flipping, but the fan outcry forced them to remove it. . . so this is just a cover-up."

P.P.S People should also keep in mind that this civ-flipping is one of those "we can't discuss that now" methods by which Firaxis hopes to shorten online games.