Sullla said:
[...]Clearly, Urederra, you are unhappy with some of the design decisions that were made with regards to Civ4. I perfectly understand and respect that, it being impossible after all to make a game that fits perfectly with the vision that each and every individual has in mind.
Sullla, I have to admit that you made it even worse.
I agree with you about the point that it is just impossible to please each and every customer, no doubt about it.
I agree as well about that there are some design decisions, which the customer just has to accept. In this area I see the siege weapons, which according to my view are a complete mess, yet undoubtely are a mess by design. The design decision I can accept, the effect is harder to accept. As we have been told prior to release day, the new artillery type units were meant to cope with the infamous SOD's. Unfortunately, this was completely and utterly missed. All what was achieved was to have even more the necessity to have SOD's as anyone can prove for himself by launching a bigger military campaign.
But, ok, this was design.
Then, there are elements like naval and air combat. Here, as I have to admit, it is much harder to believe in the fact that both are as they have been intended to work.
The AI plainly has no idea what to do with naval or air units. Even worse, the human player can't do anything senseful or meaningful with those units. They work in a completely counter-intuitive way. You have fighters, which can do some intercepting, but which just can't
fight. The struggle for air superiority is just not possible. You may have 10 fighters against your opponent's 1 fighter, yet you are not able to
fight his unit. Sure, you may launch an air attack against his city and after the first attack, his unit will stay grounded until the next turn. Yet, this is nothing which would be anything like at least partially realistic. Even with the same unit type, you will face a 50% chance of losing your unit, and another 25% chance to have your unit damaged.
I could go on, but I would like to mention the naval combat as well.
Naval units are everything which makes them unfun to use. They are too slow, they have only two domains to work at: fight other naval units - if by sheer luck they meet somewhere, or bombing down city defenses. Now, after you have manouvred your fleet towards the enemy shores, what will happen? If he has a fleet as well, there may be some naval battles. This is good and ok.
But, how often will the AI send out just one destroyer against your complete navy - while others stay in the harbor?
How often will it send out an unguarded transport, while your destroyers and battleships are waiting within the line of sight of that very harbor?
And then, after the naval battle has been decided, what is next? Your fleet will bomb down the city defenses. It will do so without being threatened at all, as the enemy's air power is almost useless against ships. There are no ordnances available to protect a harbor against an enemy's fleet. It will just take 2 turns, and his previous 80% of defense will be gone.
And after that? What will your navy do? Just one word: nothing. Nothing, since there isn't anything to do. They just cannot support ground troops with their firepower, since this is an non-existing concept. They cannot obliterate the last mine, since this has not been foreseen.
Sullla said:
Yet to then turn around and claim that the game is unfinished, just because the game doesn't correspond to YOUR vision of what it should be, well that's a bit of a cheap shot. It's one thing to disagree with a design decision, another to charge that Firaxis was being deliberately dishonest to its customers. I hope you can see the difference.
With all due respect, but the game
gives the impression to be unfinished.
I have to admit not to be a programmer. Yet, as a layperson, it is hard to understand why it would be easier to program the use of suicide siege weapons than to program the use of artillery as we know about artillery. Units, which just stay in the background and try to wear down the enemy.
And even, if one accepts this un-intuitive concept, and taking into consideration that Civ4 gives benefits to the defender where ever it can, then one asks himself about where the defensive shots have been gone? Something, which is one of the main uses of artillery, has not been taken into account for this game.
Frankly, I too have the impression that the game has not been finished in this area. It just gives me the impression that these concepts have not been properly tested, as so much seems to be missing.
Don't get me wrong, these things seem to miss not only because
I would like to see them in the game, but because it would be intuitive to find them. Intuitive, because they would reflect the use of such units as we know it from reality.
Sullla said:
As those of us who worked on Civ4 have posted (time and time again),
the game was not rushed out the door. It was, in fact, finished at release. The one area where there were some goofs was in compatibility testing, and everyone knows the story about how that turned out. But as far as actual design, you have the game that was intended. Maybe you don't like it, which is fine, but it is indeed the gameplay that the designers were trying to create. As Warpstorm posted above, a different team is working on the expansion, and they (not surprisingly) want to introuduce some new features. The notion that features were deliberately withheld for the expansion is not only false, it's rather insulting to those of us who were involved in the whole process.
You do not know that of which you speak.
(Marking by me)
And this is most probably the worst thing about your whole statement.
You can easily get units which by Woodsman and Guerilla move double the speed through forests and hills as they are able to do at plains.
You have all these irritations with siege weapons, air and naval units.
You have a tech tree, which in the later areas is anything, but flexible.
You have screens like the indicator for your spaceship, which seem completely unfinished - or better, which seem to have been added at the very last minute. You will have to count your components at the first screen of the F8-advisor, but you won't see them where your spaceship has been
painted.
You have borders, which follow almost exactly the course of rivers, yet your ships rotate like crazy when firing.
You have a gazillion of polished things at the ancient ages (although the "blob" of religious techs at the beginning doesn't appear convincing, either), and at modern times everything just looks "cobbled together".
This game looks unfinished by all measures.
You say, it was intended to look this way? Honestly, this is a complete disappointment.
..... and this cartoon edition disappointed me a lot.
