[GS] Rock Band Discussion

[SammyKhalifa]

Having slightly different requirements to do the same thing does not change the fact that they all do the same thing. They all create an item that sits in a room and makes culture.

I'm not a big fan of how great works work right now either. In my mind that's a separate issue from an additional "Rock Band" concept which I'm okay with.

 

[Scaramanga]

Having slightly different requirements to do the same thing does not change the fact that they all do the same thing. They all create an item that sits in a room and makes culture.

They produce culture alright but you can use it to research military civics if you wanted to and go Domination. Civ 5 did not have a Civics tree.

 

[Disgustipated]

There is the great band The Cult after all.

Good to hear other people have heard of them. I always felt they were underappreciated, at least in my country. I absolutely love Spiritwalker (not surprisingly I have a shaman in world of warcraft with that name).

As for the rock band concept I support it. But as mentioned, it's weird to not cover other genres as well. But I can understand the need to not over complicate things. It just seems very Gen X white guy type thing. I fit that group, so maybe that's why I like it.

I mentioned this in the other thread, because copyright violations do prevent using even modern composers. Even Aaron Copeland might still be copyrighted. And you have the problem with modern artists and writers as well. Seeing as they want to extend the game into another era, something had to be done. But I wonder will we be running out of great writers/artists/musicians by then? I sometimes run out in long games that I artificially stretch out. The only other thing would be to make them generic or made up names. I think I would still prefer it if great musician points contributed to getting rock bands.

 

[steveg700]

I think there's something to making a rock band name random in the same sort of way that a veteran unit is. "The Flaming Lips", "The White Stripes", "Blue Oyster Cult", "The Rolling Stones", and so on all have their little anecdote about how they came about, but they all *sound* like nonsense. And that's probably not accidental.

 

[Dustbrother]

There are two reason that I really hate the rock bands, and those reasons are great musicians and faith.

If I'm generating rock bands through faith, then what do my great musicians represent? Who are these great musicians, and why am I making them if we get another gameplay mechanic that replaces whatever abstraction great musicians were meant to represent? If we are going to use music as a victory condition then shouldn't I be encouraged to cultivate a civilization that excels in music? I've got buildings, wonders, and government policies that generate great musicians and hold their works; but they don't matter. Whether I have zero music buildings or ten music buildings, I can create rock bands all the same.

Since great musicians and rock bands are different entities in the game then what different real world analogs are great musicians and rock bands meant to represent?

The other issue is faith purchasing. The civ team seems to use faith as their currency to purchase aspects of the game unrelated to faith just to make the faith currency more useful. I'm going to use national parks as the example. I could see a very faith oriented civ using their faith to purchase a national park because I can assume the faith currency represents the desire of the people to create a national park for religious or moral reasons. The issue is that faith is the only way to purchase a national park. What is the rationale for that? Does the game assume that atheistic societies would have no desire for national parks?

The reason national parks and rock bands are purchased with faith is because the faith currency would be otherwise useless to a civilization that has developed a religion. The players aren't building holy sites unless they are playing religious civs, and instead of changing the religious game to encourage non-religious players to build them, they instead tied arbitrary game elements to faith, and made faith the sole way to experience those elements.

This.

 

[AriochIV]

I think Ed just thought it would be cool to have rock bands in a civ game and came up with a reason to do it.

You say that as if you thought it was a bad thing.

 

[thecraftybee]

This.

Faith does not necessarily have to mean religious faith. If you think of it as devotion or inspiration, then you can see it in the streaming eyes of Beatlemaniacs or the screeching voices of Beliebers. John Lennon said he was bigger then Jesus and to thousands of his fans that was likely true. I think if the currency was called inspiration that would better reflect the use of the currency throughout the eras, but that term is used elsewhere.

As for the rock bands, I would like to see them give a bonus to Great works of art once they have retired to boost Great Musicians.

I’d also like to be able to use Rock Bands in my own lands to give me a boost to tourism with all civs and give me some gold and a permanent amenity for the venue.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

You say that as if you thought it was a bad thing.

HA HA. No, it's not a bad thing.

 

[Human Crouton]

Faith does not necessarily have to mean religious faith. If you think of it as devotion or inspiration, then you can see it in the streaming eyes of Beatlemaniacs or the screeching voices of Beliebers. John Lennon said he was bigger then Jesus and to thousands of his fans that was likely true. I think if the currency was called inspiration that would better reflect the use of the currency throughout the eras, but that term is used elsewhere.

As for the rock bands, I would like to see them give a bonus to Great works of art once they have retired to boost Great Musicians.

I’d also like to be able to use Rock Bands in my own lands to give me a boost to tourism with all civs and give me some gold and a permanent amenity for the venue.

If faith were meant to represent some other kind of non-religious devotion or inspiration then why can faith only be generated through holy sites and a scant few tile features? Also how would the culture currency not represent devotion or inspiration in your example of Beatlemania? If you were to look for a book on Beatlemania, would you go to the religion section of the library?

My point in this is that I know that this, and every game, is full of abstractions mean to represent some real life element. But now we're getting abstractions that represent elements already in the game, and are being implemented in very inelegant ways. I can easily find a way to accept the real world analog to rock bands being purchased by faith, but I cannot find a good reason to fit the rock band and its way of being purchased when they already have abstractions that fit rock bands(great musicians) and faith(culture) that not only fit it better, but are completely ignored.

 

[qadams]

Faith does not necessarily have to mean religious faith. If you think of it as devotion or inspiration, then ...

Then don't call it Faith at all! Instead, call it Devotion, if you like, or some other good name and avoid all those problematic issues with Faith.

 

[qadams]

There are two reason that I really hate the rock bands, and those reasons are great musicians and faith.

If I'm generating rock bands through faith, then what do my great musicians represent? Who are these great musicians, and why am I making them if we get another gameplay mechanic that replaces whatever abstraction great musicians were meant to represent? If we are going to use music as a victory condition then shouldn't I be encouraged to cultivate a civilization that excels in music? I've got buildings, wonders, and government policies that generate great musicians and hold their works; but they don't matter. Whether I have zero music buildings or ten music buildings, I can create rock bands all the same.

Since great musicians and rock bands are different entities in the game then what different real world analogs are great musicians and rock bands meant to represent?

The other issue is faith purchasing. The civ team seems to use faith as their currency to purchase aspects of the game unrelated to faith just to make the faith currency more useful. I'm going to use national parks as the example. I could see a very faith oriented civ using their faith to purchase a national park because I can assume the faith currency represents the desire of the people to create a national park for religious or moral reasons. The issue is that faith is the only way to purchase a national park. What is the rationale for that? Does the game assume that atheistic societies would have no desire for national parks?

The reason national parks and rock bands are purchased with faith is because the faith currency would be otherwise useless to a civilization that has not developed a religion. The players aren't building holy sites unless they are playing religious civs, and instead of changing the religious game to encourage non-religious players to build them, they instead tied arbitrary game elements to faith, and made faith the sole way to experience those elements.

Excellent post. Right on, right on, right on.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

With all this talk of Rock bands I hope there is an achievement called "We Built this City on Rock an' Roll" by eventually causing a city to flip to your civilization after a rock concert.
I know you technically didn't build the city, but I like it.

 

[GoatsHeadSoup]

I'm not a big fan of how great works work right now either. In my mind that's a separate issue from an additional "Rock Band" concept which I'm okay with.

The problem with great works is that they are a holdover from Civ 5 and they have not been modified since. The entire cultural victory path could use an overhaul, the religious one too.

 

[isau]

I find it hilarious that a Mapuche army + Indie rock band combo might be serious threat in this expansion.

"The indigenous people are approaching, commander. And they brought Arcade Fire with them."

 

[Furycrab]

Faith is just convenient currency that exists in the game that can be used for a wide range of things but typically doesn't advance a pure military/science/hammer game plan. Try not to get hung up on the name?

Wonder if were going to be seeing something along the lines of Swedish HEAVY METAL!

 

[Leathaface]

I think it's good that you can send these Rock Bands to your biggest Cultural rival and improve tourism, though i'm not sure about it's RNG based nature. I also hope the AI can use Rock Bands against you if you're their biggest tourism rival.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Faith is just convenient currency that exists in the game that can be used for a wide range of things but typically doesn't advance a pure military/science/hammer game plan. Try not to get hung up on the name?

It would be easier not to get caught up on the name if you got some "Faith" from buildings such as Broadcast Centres, for example, instead of from Shrines, Temples, and Mosques.

 

[Furycrab]

I think it's good that you can send these Rock Bands to your biggest Cultural rival and improve tourism, though i'm not sure about it's RNG based nature. I also hope the AI can use Rock Bands against you if you're their biggest tourism rival.

My guess is that the intent is that you send your Rockbands out to Civs you've already culturally assimilated first and get "easy" wins which then levels up your Rockband to be strong enough to go after your true rival. Demo they showed us was just the earliest point they could be built against the closest target which is probably why it looked so abysmal and luck driven.

 

[Draco84]

I like the idea of rock bands, I think you should be allowed to play your own cities though.

Make it so tourism works vs all civs, but have a 90% negative modifier, so 15 vs 150 tourism. But make the odds of dispanding much lower, say 50% survivability bonus.

The intention would be to grow your band locally, and once they are big enough (high level) go on a world tour.

 

[acluewithout]

Something to bear in mind.

FXS seem to much prefer “specific” over “generic”. So, you get particular great people, not just a general great person, and they give you specific works of writing or art or whatever. You get individual religious units - Apostles, Gurus, whatever - not generic religious pressure. And you get specific governors - Magnus, Whatever - rather than more abstract Governors - eg A Steward.

FXS’s approach has pluses and minuses. As much as some of the specifics annoy me, particularly Governors, I suspect it actually does make the game more dynamic.

Rock bands are very specific, but that fits with FXS’s model I guess. They are dangerously close to my most hated Mechanic - Corporations. But. I’m willing to get on board with this unit. They’re very well executed from what we’ve seen, will maybe round out a bit more the “late game faith” units (really, just the naturalistic), and hopefully won’t be overwhelming.

Really, my only concern is that they don’t become some massive meta of their own, but that seems unlikely. I suspect they’ll be more like Warrior Monks. Kinda cool. Something to play around with if you really want to. But otherwise, you can basically ignore.

What I really want is the core of the game to work better. That doesn’t mean we can’t have things like Rockbands. Fun is fun. But the core game is what matters. So far, it seems like GS will at least significantly improve the core game mechanics (don’t know about AI), although I suspect a few things will still be not quite right although modable (eg unit balance, particularly Heavy Cav, Anti-Cav and Seige, and mid and late game hammers). So, yeah, assuming everything else is okay, Rockbands are cool.

Although. Maybe a bit Baby Boomer... I’m surprised there aren’t a few different models - eg rapper, dj, diva, jazz band...