The Civilization Network that could (and might) be

[Izmir Stinger]

This is what the (apparently scrapped or delayed) Civilization Network should be all about. Civ5 should tweet your in-game activities, and upload screen shots as you play:

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MadHatterIzzy 21-Nov-10 0943
from Civilization 5
Starting a game on Emperor difficulty as Bismark. Full game settings at http://bit.ly/cH75t #fb
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MadHatterIzzy 21-Nov-10 0948
from Civilization 5
Has founded Munich in 2200 BC.
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MadHatterIzzy 21-Nov-10 0952
from Civilization 5
Munich has been captured by barbarians in 1900 BC. View in-game map at http://bit.ly/gt97q
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MadHatterIzzy 21-Nov-10 0953
from Civilization 5
Starting a game on Monarch difficulty as Elizabeth. Full game settings at http://bit.ly/a95bq #fb
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Certain activities could be automatically broadcast to social networks with major activities updating your Facebook or Linked-in status and more granular info sent out as tweets. Those bit.ly links can be to a flikr stream of your screenshots, and completed games playback files are automatically uploaded to a Civ5 leaderboard on Facebook.

An in game interface would allow the player to send additional tweets either asking for advice from their followers, or giving it, or just funny commentary. Popular or high level players could do regular "shows" or "lessons" with "live" participants able to interact via twitter/FB, while others could peruse the whole thing later at their leisure.

I think this would be a fun and innovative way to make this otherwise predominately single-player game a social experience. If this isn't already the direction Civ5/Civilization network is going, I might try my hand at making it. Might require a 3rd party app cause some of the functions might not be available to modders, but an ingame browser suggests a plethora of opportunities.

But no, seriously, your suggestion that it should bring back caravans and engineers and include Obscuristan as a playable civ are good, too.

 

[bonafide11]

Has the Civ Network been delayed or scrapped? I was just wondering last night whatever happened to that. It's been quite a while since I've seen or heard anything about it.

 

[Chimera1804]

Seems like a cool idea. Personally I fail to see the point of sites such as FB or Twitter [/personal opinion], but considering their popularity I certainly see this as being a feasible and good endeavor.

 

[Izmir Stinger]

Has the Civ Network been delayed or scrapped? I was just wondering last night whatever happened to that. It's been quite a while since I've seen or heard anything about it.

Yeah, that's the thing. They went from 5 "announcements" a month in October and Novemeber, to a single End of Year Wrap-Up from Cid in December promising the announcement of open an beta and info from the play testing in "the new year"

... and nothing since. Almost a quarter of that "new year" is gone already and no new announcements. Civ5 was announced in the meantime time, though. I don't think that is a coincidence.

Maybe they are just going to do a 4 week public beta sometime later this year and launch it... whatever it is... but if that is the scale of the thing, I think alot of people are going to be disappointed. Farmville took more effort to produce than that.

 

[Earthling]

include Obscuristan as a playable civ

I have a hard time believing it's not trolling to forget that the rightful leader of Obscuristan is Elvis.

 

[Izmir Stinger]

Personally I fail to see the point of sites such as FB or Twitter

This kind of thing is the point of them. They are only as interesting as the people that use them. Maybe the problem isn't that the site is pointless, but that your friends are boring.

I have a hard time believing it's not trolling to forget that the rightful leader of Obscuristan is Elvis.

Long live The King.

 

[smackthewise]

I'd rather my real friends not know about my dirty little civ addiction, let alone bombard them with constant annoying updates.

I could kill those farmvill sons of *****es who spam facebook.

 

[Izmir Stinger]

I'd rather my real friends not know about my dirty little civ addiction, let alone bombard them with constant annoying updates.

I could kill those farmvill sons of *****es who spam facebook.

Just as you have the option to click "Hide" and never see any message generated by annoying games like Farmville (or fishville, mafia wars, etc.) again, your facebook friends could click the Hide button to block all updates from the Civilization Network application.

Now if you don't want them to know you play Civilization at all.... I don't know how to fix that... Get new friends?

 

[smackthewise]

@ Izmir Stinger

I'm just having a joke

As for the FB updates, i don't get them from the games themselves, but some people make comments in the News Feed like "Friends, help me expand my farmsz" and such. And I don't want to see my aunties face if i delete her from fb

 

[Izmir Stinger]

As for the FB updates, i don't get them from the games themselves, but some people make comments in the News Feed like "Friends, help me expand my farmsz" and such. And I don't want to see my aunties face if i delete her from fb

Yeah, that's annoying. They need to learn to use the game interface for crap like that. As for your auntie's face - you wouldn't have to see it anymore if you unfriended her. LOL

 

[Ahriman]

Oh god no... why must everything be made more "social"? Can't we just live our lives, and not broadcast every last thing in public? Why would I want to broadcast my game to the public? Why would anyone care?

(....he says, on a public web forum....)

 

[bonafide11]

Personally I fail to see the point of sites such as FB or Twitter

Anyone else find it ironic that he posts on an internet forum that he fails to see the point of social networking sites?

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

How pointless.

Why would I want to follow every detail of another person's game when I could simply be playing my own? I think a forum like CFC more then adequately covers everything they're trying to achieve with this gimmick; they should be allocating the resources for this elsewhere.

 

[smackthewise]

I use FB purely for keeping in contact with old friends, such as mates from High School who i'm not actively friends with any more but at least I know where to find them if I need to and for the Events section. Most parties I go to are organised through FB and it is a great way to do it as you can update everyone easily in one place keep track of any plan changes.

Beyond this, I don't get involved in anything else on the site.

think a forum like CFC more then adequately covers everything they're trying to achieve

+1. Or having an in game lobby or something, for hooking up with other players from CFC who want play multi-player.

 

[Izmir Stinger]

Oh god no... why must everything be made more "social"? Can't we just live our lives, and not broadcast every last thing in public?

You are absolutely free to do so.

Why would I want to broadcast my game to the public?

Obviously you don't.

Why would anyone care?

If you think you are are so uninteresting that nobody would care, you would simply click "not right now" when the game prompts you to put in your social networking info and never look back. I think you are vastly underestimating A) the number of people out there on the internet and B) the percentage of them who might be interested in reading about how other people play Civ 5.

One CivFanatic who has played games in a public fora has 733 followers (as of this post - by posting it I almost guarantee he will get a few more) with 2-3 thousand views on his older videos. Note, he has 50k views on his first video, and nowhere near that number on later videos, which is a perfect demonstration of viewer discretion. If you don't want to consume this sort of information, you can choose not to, as did apparently 95% of the people who found his first video.

(....he says, on a public web forum....)

Indeed. At least you see the irony.

You are on a forum where people play Civilization games publicly and comment on them using a bulletin board communication format. As a style of communication BBS's are a, what, 30 year old medium? You are already engaging in "social activities as part of a network" right here on civ fanatics, you are just doing it the old fashioned way.

This sort of feature in no way forces you to produce or consume any of this sort of content. If your reaction to FB/Twitter is "Oh God No" then don't consume it. I see it as being little different than old people who hate the new-fangled electronic mails.

Why would I want to follow every detail of another person's game when I could simply be playing my own?

Why do people post game journals on this site, and why do others read them?

I think a forum like CFC more then adequately covers everything they're trying to achieve with this gimmick; they should be allocating the resources for this elsewhere.

The telephone more than adequately covers our person to person communication need. The resources for this DARPAnet thing should be allocated elsewhere.

+1. Or having an in game lobby or something, for hooking up with other players from CFC who want play multi-player.

There is already an ingame browser announced as a confirmed feature, so if BBS's are the most advance form of communication you are comfortable with, then you are set. I think Firaxis is pretty set on using GameSpy as a multiplayer matchmaking system. Like contractually set - I think there is a corporate relationship of some kind. I might be wrong though.

 

[Izmir Stinger]

Oh god no... why must everything be made more "social"?

...

(....he says, on a public web forum....)

Hah! I clicked through to your profile and I see you make use of the friends and profile visitor messages functionality. Functionality that was added to the vBulletin software in blatant imitation of social networking sites like Facebook! LOL

 

[Grawss]

Just give it a "replay" builder (similar to Warcraft III; that system was amazing), and give us a one-stop-shop to view the replays.

 

[UKScud]

If you think you are are so uninteresting that nobody would care, you would simply click "not right now" when the game prompts you to put in your social networking info and never look back. I think you are vastly underestimating A) the number of people out there on the internet and B) the percentage of them who might be interested in reading about how other people play Civ 5.

Now I've nothing against a good article on this site explaining to me how [someone thinks I can] do better in my game, but a blow by blow account???

I can imagine watching a Youtube video where someone explains the features of Civ5 and how to get the best from them, or how to arrange a group of units in this new 1 unit per tile combat system to attack a city best, but to go through a text only version of the minutae of every game I play....why?, explain to me why?

 

[Izmir Stinger]

Now I've nothing against a good article on this site explaining to me how [someone thinks I can] do better in my game, but a blow by blow account???

I can imagine watching a Youtube video where someone explains the features of Civ5 and how to get the best from them, or how to arrange a group of units in this new 1 unit per tile combat system to attack a city best, but to go through a text only version of the minutae of every game I play....why?, explain to me why?

You obviously don't know what flikr is if you thought I was suggesting text only.

And don't read a blow by blow. Tweets can be tagged, manually or automatically, based on content and intended usage. I've even got tags in the joke example above. You can consume as much or as little of the information as you want. Following isn't even the only way to consume it. Two of the tweets above would become status messages for Facebook, or the tweets could display in an RSS feed on another site, or even this one for crying out loud.

This is an information society. Generating information can only be a good thing. If it turns out to be useless or uninteresting then - oh noes! - you temporarily consumed a few kilobytes on a hard drive that costs less than a dollar a gigabyte. Some people actually like reading their farmville friends farmville updates. They are literally reading about harvests of imaginary crops and the birth of imaginary livestock. Just because I can't understand their fascination with it doesn't mean I think it shouldn't exist.

And I'm not even scratching the surface. Such updates could be consumed by a central server where a contest is being hosted. Firaxis could consume all tweets and flikr streams generated by Civ5 to determine how people are playing the game in order to make a better Civ6 or Alpha Centauri 2 (please please please - I know, not gonna happen).

It's just information man. If you can't figure out some potential uses for an information feed, go back to the 80s. There is no place for you here in the future.

 

[Chimera1804]

Anyone else find it ironic that he posts on an internet forum that he fails to see the point of social networking sites?

Yes I was aware of the irony...but let's not get into a debate on the finer points of the key differences between sites such as CFC and FB...