RE Getting 'into' character. Civ4 is the least RP friendly Civ.

AU_Armageddon

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Most of you prolly won't know what I'm talkin about, but a lot of people like to 'get into character' when gaming. Not just CRPG's like NWN, WoW, etc, but any game that lets you get into a persona including the Civ series.

This Civ breaks that immersion a lot, more than any other. Cos of all the CHEESE. I like Civ4, it's the best 'game' of the series so far in many ways. But it's also the most noobed down cheesiest civ ever.

Gameplay mechanics and balance mechanisms to make the game 'fair' and protect people from potentially cheating (dear god no end of the world) have caused this, and it is unfortunate.

CHEESE 1)Diplomacy - cheese factory. Forget about it. You can have Civ X on the ropes, d-day army at their capital's gates, and they won't give you a single tech unless they are the ones to offer it first (like 50 games of Monarchy later and I can say that is 100% true). They won't give you an inch with anything. The RED system to protect people from ruining their game by exploiting seemed okay at first, but I've since come to the conclusion it is so illogical that it dumps you right out of any possible immersion.

The whole dilpo system is to set up a conspiracy where 'everyone else' understands that all deals to YOU are only okay if unfair - under any circumstances whatsoever unless they initiate. I can have 20 techs and 20k gold but Civ Z will not be persuaded to declare war on anyone regardless of our history, relationship or anything. I can have proven after 5 successful wars on Civ Y that I will wipe them out without a tribute, but they won't even consider it, except as a negative diplo notch. THEY all though will demand tribute ceaselessly even if I have just whooped them for last 3 requests, and now down to one city, doing so a fourth time guarantees their genocide.

It's so ridiculous on every level of diplo that I honestly think it would be better even to leave the whole thing open to be set by player so we can use our own judgement as what would be fair. I'm good at diplo by 'game' standards and cheese it all up the way you are expected to trade and get everything I need in the wanky way you are sposed to. With all their animations and 2005 upgrade, it's ironic that the AI diplo is less intelligent and less real and less believable than ever before.

CHEESE 2) The whole city siege scenario. It is well balanced. Granted. Full points to Firaxis. Kudos. The best balanced set up I can think of from any of these numerous types of games including CTP/AC/etc. But charging my siege, age after age, on the front line as suicide bombers in an eternal Al Quida stategy is another immersion killer.

CHEESE 3) Nukes. Yeah nice one. I fired my first Nuke a couple days ago. Was a tight game and I seriously had to sacrifice my lead and much else to put it all into place to fire a Nuke at key capital before SDI and air shelters would be around. Even sent merchant 43 turn trip to get me the cash just to buy that Nuke instantly upon Manhattan Project completion. Was so pumped and fizzle. It did nothing. Direct hit on city centre - didn't kill a single one of the many units in THE tile it hit, didn't destory any buildings, didn't even leave any fall out, didn't cripple the population. My own forces - stupidly waiting out of city radius because they expected a NUKE, were slaughtered because by the time they got into city the entirely unkilled forces were fully healed of their minimal suntans anyway. Nukes in Civ 4 are not Nukes. They are not fun. They are not balanced. They are not realistic in any remote sense. And they are thus cheesed immersion killers that will suck every time you fire one. (Has anyone seen a picture of Hiroshima afterwards? That wasn't even an ICBM like Civ4).

CHEESE 4) Sea sucks arse. You can't do crap with it. It's only purpose is to protect fishing boats. Cheaper to just make a lot of fishing boats and keep them in storage than make any navy. IT DOESN'T DO ANYTHING.

CHEESE 5) Air. Sucks arse as well. I realised recently that I don't even bother researching flight anymore. It's more hassle than it's worth, and the main point, ENTIRELY REDUNDANT.

CHEESE 6) GP. Actually great people are a lot of fun. But they have many cheesy elements. Culture Bombs? Gimme a break. All the strats that you should do to win are CHEESEY. Save em up for strategic deployment. That's exactly what artists are known for historically. Save up your engineers too. Bam bam bam, 3 wonders out the door. It's cool, its fun, its stupid. Incidentally, while on topic of wonders - these wonder movies suck. Here's a secret - NOBODY OUT THERE IS GOING TO WATCH THEM A SECOND TIME. Have a play of Civ2 and see if you can figure out why they were cool. And what they did for immersion. JS Bach's cathedral, Hoover Dam, Manhattan Project, man they were rewards for getting your wonder.

CHEESE 7) Contintents. Random Maps. They are cheeeeeesy. It'd be nice if continents resembled an earth variation like the other civs. Many games of continents later and I have concluded that the odds of an alternate Earth type feel to the layout is 1%, if that. And surely islands could've been scattered so they don't look like a tic tac toe chart EVERY TIME.

CHEESE 8) Spies. They are cheesy for same reason air and sea is cheesey. They are redudant. The points you spend building Scotland Yard and spies, any time you spend at all - is all more cost effective to invest into military or anything else instead. They are limited beyond all other civ & civ-like games, are not actually fun, and do not add any sense of feeling to the user.

I'm gonna stop here, but I have at least another 5 CHEESE's that rip me right the hell outta getting into character in this game. Civ4 is great. My favourite Civ yet. It's just a pity that to make it the most playable it was made so goddam cheesy. I don't believe it had to be. I dunno if it was laziness, or shortsightedness, or lack of imagination, but I think someone just didn't get it. Civ4 is a great game. It's just a shame.
 
Darn, that post made me hungry... *goes to fridge for some cheese...* :p :D
 
I DO think that nukes should be more powerful. Higher penaltys, but much more powerful. Maybe even a 10% chance that the city will crumple to dust! (Unless it is the Capitol)
 
AU_Armageddon said:
CHEESE 1)Diplomacy - cheese factory. Forget about it. You can have Civ X on the ropes, d-day army at their capital's gates, and they won't give you a single tech unless they are the ones to offer it first (like 50 games of Monarchy later and I can say that is 100% true). They won't give you an inch with anything. The RED system to protect people from ruining their game by exploiting seemed okay at first, but I've since come to the conclusion it is so illogical that it dumps you right out of any possible immersion.

The whole dilpo system is to set up a conspiracy where 'everyone else' understands that all deals to YOU are only okay if unfair - under any circumstances whatsoever unless they initiate. I can have 20 techs and 20k gold but Civ Z will not be persuaded to declare war on anyone regardless of our history, relationship or anything. I can have proven after 5 successful wars on Civ Y that I will wipe them out without a tribute, but they won't even consider it, except as a negative diplo notch. THEY all though will demand tribute ceaselessly even if I have just whooped them for last 3 requests, and now down to one city, doing so a fourth time guarantees their genocide.

It's so ridiculous on every level of diplo that I honestly think it would be better even to leave the whole thing open to be set by player so we can use our own judgement as what would be fair. I'm good at diplo by 'game' standards and cheese it all up the way you are expected to trade and get everything I need in the wanky way you are sposed to. With all their animations and 2005 upgrade, it's ironic that the AI diplo is less intelligent and less real and less believable than ever before.

Good to let off some steam, hm? ;)

Anyway, I totally agree with your first point. Items marked red feel extremely artificial and stupid to me. Yes, they may be there to save time, but as you said, they kill roleplaying. I can't ask for something, or just demand it? A poster in another thread mentioned that you may be forced to declare wars "without a reason", because you simply can't demand stuff from the AI...

The diplomacy in Civ IV certainly has more potential than in older versions of the game, but it also takes some steps backward IMO. My main points to improve it would be to remove the "marked red" category, and to add a way to "refuse to answer the AI".
 
Could you explain your meaning of "cheesy"? I had an entirely different interpretation of the word, judging by this post..
 
Take what I may say in a different view. I don't play nearly as high of a difficulty as you do.
Diplo: It is possible to ask the AI to lend a tech to a friend, if the tech is probably owned by everyone else, and the AI has no use keeping it for building Wonders. You'll have to get them to be pleased with you before they'd even consider gifting a tech. Trades are kinda unfair, but for critical techs, like Alphabet, you might be able to get a fair trade, or something close to it. The Red out system isn't illogical, IMO. When the real Manhattan project is just done, I don't see America going around telling their friends how to build nukes (correct me if I'm wrong). The AI would try and hold on to a tech if they're trying to build that wonder. They'll just not trade it to you, and it will tell you the reason on mouse over. Sometimes they just don't like you enough, others is when they "don't want to trade it just yet" - code word for I'm building a wonder, piss off.
I haven't have the need to suicide my siege weapons a lot, but I can see that. Pillaging and generally blocking off reinforcement would help if you have a tough city to crack.
Air and Sea units sucks - agreed. In most games, the battleships are usually quite prone to submarines. In Civ 4, they get blown out of the waters if they tried to attack a battleship. IMO they're rather pointless, except to clean up islands. Air units don't damage enough, and it isn't possible (yet) to destroy an intercepting fighter. There's also a need for a stronger attack aircraft that can based on carriers.
Culture bombs don't really work on established borders. They work well on weak/new/junk cities (yes I've tried doing this). They work to reduce resistance after conquering the city, and they will be needed to increase culture output by becoming a super-specialist if you want a cultural victory. Agreed on the Engineers - perhaps a turn delay of some sort?
Terra maps are meant to simulate "old world" vs "new world". There are Earth scenarios. I think it's going to be a bit hard to tweak the generator for Continents or Terra to make it generate maps that feels like Earth.
Most people are frustrated by the AI using spies. They do net you more info, hard to detect, and sometimes can help with a war, but yeah, you're right, the amount of production needed isn't quite worth it.
 
Re nukes: You need two nukes to kill a city.

Re cheese: nutritional and yummy.

Re everything else: mod, or maybe you should have tested what game you bought before the fact.
 
man i would like some cheese now :) , dude if you complain about the game that much, dont play it,
 
In my eyes, AU_Armageddon is totally right.
And I do agree with him that Civ4 is the best Civ out there so far.
But especially the diplo thingy is quite annoying. Diplomacy in Civ3 was fun, logical, easy to see through. But in Civ4, I sometimes wonder if diplo is just there for the AI, not for me.
 
as long as pet peeves are being aired - whats up with this - civ x asks you for a trade, for example they will trade you tech a for tech b and 40 gold. You want tech b but you are already researching tech a and have 3 turns left before you have it. So you ask can we negotiate? ok so now you are on a screen asking them how you can make the deal better for them - no no I want them to make the deal better for me, should be an option...instead of having to go back several screens blank it all out put tech b up and ask what they will give me for it. all trading/diplo seems to automatically favor the AI. Just a minor peev.
 
I think by CHEESE he means fluff.

4, yes it does do something, you just need to play on an appropriate map.
5, A mass load of bombers can do a hell of a lot of damage.
6, What would you have Great Artists do, Great Engineers?
7, Try the terra map, it is suppose to be "Earth" like.

You say Civ4 is the best game of the seris, yet you call many of its features "CHEESE". Do you realize you are condradicting yourself? Why do you want something to be wrong with it? If all these problems were worth writing down (man that must of taken at least 15 minutes to write all that down), why don't you just not play the game, and not come here to talk about how much it sucks.

You know in that 15 minutes you could of easily broke the CDs into 100 pieces.
 
vbraun said:
If all these problems were worth writing down (man that must of taken at least 15 minutes to write all that down), why don't you just not play the game, and not come here to talk about how much it sucks.

You know in that 15 minutes you could of easily broke the CDs into 100 pieces.

I find the OP very interesting, as I'd like to know what people think about the game. Given the topic of the forum, I think it is very appropriate to post these kinds of opinions here. So I am glad he spent those 15 mins on posting and not smashing the CDs.

OTOH, vbraun, you may want to take a moment and consider who the hell cares about what you think about what someone else should do with their time.
 
vbraun said:
You say Civ4 is the best game of the seris, yet you call many of its features "CHEESE". Do you realize you are condradicting yourself?

How is that a contradiction? He's saying the game is pretty good, but could have been a lot better if several of its features had been implemented differently. Makes perfect sense to me, even if I don't agree with all of his points.
 
Uh I'd argue about FLight being useless. I can't imagine why u say this..seriously. You complained about suiciding siege equipment but disregards air bombers that does the job with less chance of being destroyed and can cripple any land forces within their bombing radius with Collateral dmg.

And for the nuke deployment: don't nuke 1 turn b4 ur forces are in position. park ur forces next to the city tile. Nuke the tile one tile away from the city on next turn.. It'll still get caught in the 3x3 blast radius then your forces can mop the weakened defenders clean in the same turn. TRUST me.

I agree with Sea, Diplomacy and Spy. Sea's kinda limited to the kind of map you're playing but Spy's my major beef. I never thought of building scotland yard for spies at all. It makes no sense why a wonder is needed just to employ an espionage mission. Imo that's why i skipped it altogether since I rather churn out more infantry or cavalry in the 10 turns to make it.
 
"if you complain about the game that much, dont play it"

People who say things like this are just stupid. Humans are capable of having both positive and negative feelings toward the same thing. A person could enjoy playing a game (or doing any activity) overall, yet still have complaints about it. His complaints are just about one aspect of the game. And even if you enjoy something, that doesn't mean it's perfect and couldn't be improved.

I'm sure there are things in your life that you enjoy but also have criticisms of, and feel could be improved. In fact, I bet that if you stopped to think about it, Civ 4 would be one of those things. Or is it the perfect game? Does a game have to be perfect for someone to enjoy playing it?
 
Agree about the AI being way to reluctant to give up anything for peace.
Everything else - no cheese. If you deliberately choose levels too easy for your skills, and the game isn't over before ANYONE gets nukes, or you have several Great Artists to stock, your problem.
And nukes - nukes are for n00bs. As always in Civ.
 
"Everything else - no cheese. If you deliberately choose levels too easy for your skills, and the game isn't over before ANYONE gets nukes, or you have several Great Artists to stock, your problem."

I didn't take much in there to indicate he thought the game was too easy... just that parts are lame or not useful enough.

"And nukes - nukes are for n00bs. As always in Civ."

This is a ridiculous thing to say. If this is the case, they shouldn't be in the game.
 
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