So really where is this?

[Biz_]

Joined 2010? Maybe didn't play the release version of Civ 4? I did. It was nothing about economic dominance.

i played 10000 hours of civ4 without expansions
i used to be one of the best players in the world

i think i understand a little bit of what winning civ4 is about

 

[Roxlimn]

If you understood that much, then you should have understood that the player is incapable of overcoming the economic advantages of the AI at the start of the game when Axemen come online, and that the way the player became dominant is because the AI frittered its advantages away by building Wonders that would ultimately benefit the player. Also by building units that did not matter. If you didn't understand that, then you were just one of the players who won by rote and didn't really understand what was going on.

 

[Biz_]

If you understood that much, then you should have understood that the player is incapable of overcoming the economic advantages of the AI at the start of the game when Axemen come online, and that the way the player became dominant is because the AI frittered its advantages away by building Wonders that would ultimately benefit the player. Also by building units that did not matter. If you didn't understand that, then you were just one of the players who won by rote and didn't really understand what was going on.

lol.

i played against real people, not AIs

 

[Roxlimn]

MP in Civ 4 was functionally unplayable at release. The topic is release state. Civ 4 was horrific, and the AI, specifically was. If you want to brag, you'll find a better audience in the Civ 4 forums.

 

[Nefelia]

i played 10000 hours of civ4 without expansions
i used to be one of the best players in the world

i think i understand a little bit of what winning civ4 is about

Ah, lol. Civ as an e-sport is a pretty funny concept.

 

[Helmling]

It has never existed (although Civ IV came close), but it might some day if we rectified our errors and would force the devs to rectify theirs (i.e. not preorder any game, and not buy badly reviewed games until they're adequately patched). Next question?

Disclaimer: I did preorder (shame on me!), but I won't make that mistake again...

Yeah, except that this game is getting great reviews.

I think we romanticize the past. CiV was super buggy and crash prone at launch. I remember that clearly. IV is so long ago...I don't know, but I think maybe we're thinking of the game IV became, not what it was at launch.

For my part, I don't see any game breaking problems in this release. I'm hooked and I'm having a blast. Yeah, AI is stupid, sure. But I come to build and the new mechanics make that an interesting challenge.

 

[Roxlimn]

Stack combat was a real mess in Civ 4. I don't mean what it became, which was still simple. I mean what it was. Before the Community got its mitts on it, siege weapons were simply never used because they didn't do collateral damage to a stack when Civ 4 released. And since Cities didn't defend themselves, you always just went for the things that would kill the Garrison Stack or enemy stacks. Even after Warlords released, the AI couldn't fight worth a damn. I was Shaka Zulu at the time, and Zulus only came out after Warlords. I was fighting Monte and he was sending UNSTACKED Riflemen. So I picked them off one at a time.

And since I could Draft and the AI never did, I was staring down size 10 AI stacks with size 30 and size 50 stacks. It was ridiculous.

So it's not only that 4 was bugged and unbalanced at launch, it was crappy for a fairly long time afterwards. It just felt good because Civ 3 after Conquests introduced Armies was just ludicrous (basically using an Army was insta-win on any difficulty).

I mean, back in the day, the Cottage Economy was the only economy and people were complaining that all Civ 4 was was cottaging every tile in sight.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Yeah, except that this game is getting great reviews.

I think we romanticize the past. CiV was super buggy and crash prone at launch. I remember that clearly. IV is so long ago...I don't know, but I think maybe we're thinking of the game IV became, not what it was at launch.

For my part, I don't see any game breaking problems in this release. I'm hooked and I'm having a blast. Yeah, AI is stupid, sure. But I come to build and the new mechanics make that an interesting challenge.

I meant the Steam reviews ofc (not the official shills), which were at ~75 % positive when I last checked. I'd call that a game with significant issues.

Civ V was a terrible game at launch, and is a slightly crappy one still, after all the patches and expansions (mostly due to 1upt). To be fair, Civ IV was a long time ago, but I can't remember anywhere near the same level of backlash as with either the Civ V or Civ VI release. There was some criticism, sure, as with every new release. It was mostly about the AI, iirc. Compared to Civ III though, even that was stellar (you could simply empty your city of units and make the AI 'dance around' back and forth in Civ III ).

I agree that the problems don't break the game (other than public multiplayer, due to the exploits). But they do start to wear one out after a while, and right now that while is about two weeks long, not months or years, as I'd like it to be. Eyes out for that elusive first patch...

Off topic: Please make some more Philosopher King stories about Civ VI! Those were some of the best Civ stories that I've ever read, and I'm sure many people would agree with that assessment.

 

[Gorbles]

You don't remember because it was such a long time ago.

You don't remember because games weren't scrutinised as heavily.

You don't remember because games reached less people than they do nowadays.

There are many reasons why there was less of X, less of Y, Z years in the past. Nobody's memories are perfect, and actually to that end someone recently made a thread cataloguing CFC reactions to Civ 4. Let's just say there was a lot of negative commments made

@Gorbles What?!
I think most of us can see that Civ VI has incorporated many aspects from mods that exist for Civ V. All the changes VP has made to the AI and other DLL based mechanics are freely accessible via the GitHub repo so if the developers really wanted to make a challenging AI all they had to do was look at the code.
Time and money constraints do not justify the product released by Firaxis, they must be walking to a different tune to the rest of us.

None of the complaints about AI have any excuses stemming from the new game mechanics, they are all basic errors/design decisions that could easily be changed if they so desired. Clearly they do not! Firaxis are simply making a game that they feel appeals to the majority. Maybe they are right, maybe those of us here in CFC are elitists? Too skilled in a game that is in it's 6th iteration? I personally don't believe that.
If I see a an un-escorted settler trying to forward settle next to an active warzone I think poor AI.
If I see archers massing around a city but no melee unit to capture it I think poor AI.
If I see unsettled strategic resources near to your starting city and a settler in your capital, 200 turns into the game, I think poor AI.
Need I go on?

Sorry for the late reply, but I don't know what you expect me to say to your expectation that you can pick up some modder extensions via GitHub and drop them into the source for a new engine and dataset. This is precisely what I was talking about r.e. the divide between modders and developers.

I have no idea about your experience or competence, so I'm making no assumptions, but I want to stress that it's not as easy certainly as you're making it out to be.

 

[Victoria]

I quite enjoyed Colonization, in fact I loved it.
But if I played it today I may just see the flaws in it....maybe a bit like the Civ IV fanatics.

 

[JtW]

Are you serious? I've played a lot of strategy games, and ALL OF THEM had better AI at launch. The AI is Civ 6 is a sick joke. I don't care about the rest of the features as long as the AI doesn't really exist.

 

[CrispyCritter]

lol.

i played against real people, not AIs

Are you making the claim that Civ 4 multi-player worked well upon initial release of Civ 4? Wow, that's different from my memory!

 

[Roxlimn]

Are you serious? I've played a lot of strategy games, and ALL OF THEM had better AI at launch. The AI is Civ 6 is a sick joke. I don't care about the rest of the features as long as the AI doesn't really exist.

We've already pointed out that a number of strategy games have bad AI - at least as bad as Civ 6's, and at least 2 of the previous entries in this series actually had worse AI at launch. Civ4's AI was atrocious at launch, and remained atrocious until well past Warlords, and arguably a little past BTS. If you haven't played Civ 4, I think you might find it for cheap, and it's a pretty good game now.

 

[fatmanlittleboy]

What I would like to know is..Where is this other 4x game you <all> speak of?

What an incredibly arrogant post. So we're just supposed to roll over and take it because there's no perfect game?

This is what's wrong with the gaming industry, and indeed all of America. We used to strive for perfection, but now it seems "half-assed" is an acceptable answer.

 

[Biz_]

Are you making the claim that Civ 4 multi-player worked well upon initial release of Civ 4? Wow, that's different from my memory!

no. i'm merely explaining why civ4 was not broken at a fundamental game structure level like civ6 is

bugs get fixed with patches pretty regularly. design flaws generally don't

this myth that civ4 needed expansions before it was good is complete nonsense spewed by feature fans and not strategists

 

[JtW]

We've already pointed out that a number of strategy games have bad AI - at least as bad as Civ 6's, and at least 2 of the previous entries in this series actually had worse AI at launch. Civ4's AI was atrocious at launch, and remained atrocious until well past Warlords, and arguably a little past BTS. If you haven't played Civ 4, I think you might find it for cheap, and it's a pretty good game now.

I've played all Civ games except for BE, thank you very much. But I haven't played Civ 4 at launch so I'll take your word for it. Civ 5's AI was much better at launch, though. It was still very poor, but the AI at least knew that you can use units to attack and not to shuffle around aimlessly.

 

[CrispyCritter]

no. i'm merely explaining why civ4 was not broken at a fundamental game structure level like civ6 is

bugs get fixed with patches pretty regularly. design flaws generally don't

this myth that civ4 needed expansions before it was good is complete nonsense spewed by feature fans and not strategists

I'm sorry, but I lost track of your argument then. You claim that the initial buggy AI didn't bother you, because you played real folks rather than AI, but that couldn't have been at initial release since the multi-player features were too badly broken at release - it took them a while as I recall.

Civ 4 was badly unbalanced with numerous exploits and bugs at release. It was also a very much simpler game than Civ 6. It became a good game when they were able to balance things out. Civ 4 needed the balancing that the additional features in later expansions gave. As I recall, collateral damage was such a needed feature.

 

[ExpiredReign]

...

Sorry for the late reply, but I don't know what you expect me to say to your expectation that you can pick up some modder extensions via GitHub and drop them into the source for a new engine and dataset. This is precisely what I was talking about r.e. the divide between modders and developers.

I have no idea about your experience or competence, so I'm making no assumptions, but I want to stress that it's not as easy certainly as you're making it out to be.

The changes made by the Vox Populi team are much more extensive than that.
When the source code for the DLL was released numerous changes to AI functions were closely examined and fixed, even new ones added, so that the core mechanics of Civ V, as played in Vox Populi, are much more than what was released by Firaxis.
I haven't yet seen the code for Civ VI but I will put good money on there being similar, if not identical, AI routines included in it. This is what I am talking about. The core code that defines the AI is in the DLL and a small team over a period of 2 years has produced a much better AI than a fully funded software company has in 5 years with many more coders in their employ.

Assuming they are still coding in C++, and even if they're not, examining the code changes would provide them with all they need even if they didn't take the repo and merge it into their own source. Coding for a game may not be easy but it isn't rocket science either, anyone with a modicum of coding can see what needs to be done and do it, the fact Firaxis hasn't tells me they don't value a working AI too highly.

 

[Ricci]

So no more new versions of Civ should be released then?
Personally I didn't like Civ IV (unlimited stacking is such a broken mechanic these days) but I appreciate that a lot of people think it is the best Civ. That said if they went back to unlimited stacking I would pass on that game without feeling the need to go to the forums and bang on about it every time a new version was released

Ehhhhh.. 1UPT is such a broken mechanic these days. Proven again, and again.. .. and recently again.
On the other hand, devs themselves admitted how much time they actually spend reading input in the forums. So, for what it`s worth.

 

[Roxlimn]

I've played all Civ games except for BE, thank you very much. But I haven't played Civ 4 at launch so I'll take your word for it. Civ 5's AI was much better at launch, though. It was still very poor, but the AI at least knew that you can use units to attack and not to shuffle around aimlessly.

Coulda fooled me. They certainly did a lot of shuffling around while I shot them to death. And they did that while also occasionally suicidally attacking invincible positions.