Upcoming Patch Info

[Pietato]

I don't target people. If I see something that seems incorrect, I engage with it. If that happens to be you saying it, that's not personal. If it turns out to actually be incorrect, that is so very much not my fault.

I happen to think, as a personal opinion, that the series should move forward. That will inevitably lead to things that suck. That's how progress is made. It is extremely rare for a new thing to get it right the first time. The first guns were godawful. If you happen to think otherwise, then I don't see how it's a distortion to simply refer to that for what it is - a desire to revert to previous games, at the expense of progress and innovation. It is not so very rare for people to be against innovative things. In fact, it is very common.

There you go again, distorting what people say, so you can force your own opinion on them. Stop it.

Moderator Action: Please cease the personal comments and get back to the discussion.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

BE's mechanics are bad. They are not fun, they are imbalanced, and they are poorly implemented. They do not have to suck from the start, as they could have easily been beta-tested before we paid for it. Instead, we beta test it.

 

[Yucatan]

...[YOU] paid,[YOU] beta test it.

Make them pay. Don't buy firaxis game till it's not beta anymore. Make them loose money. Simple as that. Steam is your ally . Or other ways.

Still love Civ Be but quality level of release close to Civ 5 vanilla.

 

[Roxlimn]

Better in some ways. The AI isn't routinely suiciding its Ranged Units by assigning them to guard melee units from your melee units. Better than Civ4 Vanilla in that the AI actually kind of improves its tiles. Better than Civ 4 ever in that it can actually show up on another continent. Capable of winning against a city and 2 Ranged Units (see YouTube vid).

 

[Pietato]

I was gifted the game. No way I was paying the ridiculous price it costs in Oceania.

The AI marches armies through Miasma until they are dead. It is horrendous.

 

[traius]

Better in some ways. The AI isn't routinely suiciding its Ranged Units by assigning them to guard melee units from your melee units. Better than Civ4 Vanilla in that the AI actually kind of improves its tiles. Better than Civ 4 ever in that it can actually show up on another continent. Capable of winning against a city and 2 Ranged Units (see YouTube vid).

AI can show up on other continents in Civ4. They aren't great at it though, I'll give you that. But I once had a 20 Galleon (thus 60 unit) naval invasion pop up in one game. But they were mostly siege units as the loading algorithm prefers it (it happens to human players too if you select all units and load them onto many ships at once; siege are loaded first), which meant it was a lot weaker than it should have been. But I could just as easily say that CivBE is worse in that way because when it shows up on another continent it shows up with too few units and then has no idea what to do with them.

I've noticed a trend: you REALLY hate civ4 for some reason, and misrepresent its mechanics a LOT.

 

[Roxlimn]

I liked Civ4 when I played it during its time in the years after its release. I still like it a fair bit. I just think that it had a lot of problems as well. I can like a thing without being blind to its problems. I can see issues in Civ games without saying Firaxis cheated me or played me for a fool or any such nonsense.

It's just that I've been playing these games for a long time and I remember what they were like back then. I don't recall any Civ4 AI actually being able to show up on a cross-continental invasion until I quit playing it. Like, I left entire continents undefended as soon as I mopped up all the other Civs in it. And this was Civ4 where an undefended city was an insta-capture. Never lost a city. This was a well-known weakness. Perhaps it got patched up since then.

I'm only bringing these things up because I see people saying, "It wasn't like this before!!!" No. It was like this before. It was pretty much exactly like this. Better in some ways.

 

[ls612]

Moderator Action: Stop making this thread about the other posters. You can have disagreements, but don't parody or make fun of people you disagree with.

 

[FaceUnderMask]

How about a bet?

I think this is how devs will fix absurd amounts of early TR science:
- decrease overall science from TRs by 2 times;
- add a tech that increases TR science by 50%;
- add a virtue that increases TR science by 50%; most possibly industry.
Voila.

 

[RonMar]

For news about Aspyr Media's problems with Linux version of game?? and patch. See:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTg1NTI

This seems to especially refer to the Linux version of the game/patch. I tried to get better info on the problems with the Mac patch.

 

[m15a]

That link is broken. Here's the correct one:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTg1NTI

 

[Pietato]

When I played Civ 4, the AI would invade me cross-continent. I remember it clearly in one game, because I had to station a fleet and some ground units all along my south-eastern coast. This was release civ 4, without any expansions.

 

[Manannan]

Better than Civ 4 ever in that it can actually show up on another continent.

Pics or it didn't happen. The AI keeps having it's invasion plans thwarted in my games by roving sea dragons/krakens.

 

[Lucius_]

Pics or it didn't happen. The AI keeps having it's invasion plans thwarted in my games by roving sea dragons/krakens.

I've seen a unit show up in a cross continental war. I've seen ships show up in a good quantity for the time. An invasion capable of success, even remotely? I have not seen that in BE personally.

 

[ehroifcf]

so is there any news at all about the patch itself apart from things about transferring it to mac? i just want to be able to play it again without getting frustrated to the point of resigning a game

 

[Roxlimn]

CivBE AI is still largely incapable of a coherent cross-continental invasion. I believe this is because the changing relationships of ships and units, the embark mechanic, and what all of those do to defense and unit vulnerability are very difficult to code battle AI for, even though they're very intuitive for a human.

Even as a human, I can recognize that I'm making a lot of complex situation-dependent decisions in embarking, moving, and deploying my ground troops across water. Without good planning and movement, units arrive at the battle in complete disarray, which happen often enough to the AI without the added complexity of embarkation. The bad auto-movement AI is part of the reason for why the overall military AI is bad.

Simplification of the unit relationships in CivBE makes the AI more competent. It's not actually better - the situation is just more manageable for it. It seems the right way to get better AI isn't actually to ask for better AI, but ask for military strategic game depictions that simple AIs can understand.

 

[Aimeryan]

What's remarkable about Firaxis is that they actually insist on creating new games with new sensibilities and new mechanics and new ideas despite all this backlash from the fans.

Most of BE's mechanics are not new; just tweaks. The only mechanic that I could say is outright new (for Civ) is the tech web - which I haven't really seen people complain about (maybe some balancing is needed, but that is mostly the techs themselves, not the tech web).

Personally, I would have liked to have seen more innovation - especially regarding the aliens (or failing that, something more like SMAC's aliens with a twist).

The leader and seed options in BE are just a slight tweak on the more combined qualities of the leaders in previous Civ games, except they are more quantitative than qualitative (yields rather than unique mechanics). I like the separation (yay, customisation), I dislike how the options are largely weak and unimaginative (so, yay?, customisation that hardly matters).

The trade-routes being local-capped rather than global-capped; better in my opinion (they scale), however, still an arbitrary restriction from my point of view. Also, no innovative UI to deal with the trade-routes obviously increasing drastically in number as the game goes on?

Virtues, just a tweak on previous Civs. I would say the ideologies of Civ 5 were more innovative.

Military units, hardly even tweaks. Not really much more to say on this.

Satellite layer, sort of innovative, sort of just another layer. The no-overlap rules are sort of innovative?

Energy = Gold, Health = Happiness. Tweaks.

Miasma, innovative somewhat, but quite minor. No other new terrain mechanics, tweaks on what already existed. Natural wonders removed - does that count as innovative, or just lazy?

Probably missing something, but that sums up how innovative I feel they have been - I very much can assure you that most of the calls for change are not because "they actually insist on creating new games with new sensibilities and new mechanics and new ideas".

 

[Roxlimn]

Aimeryan:

That seems worthy of a thread. I'll make one talking about it when I get home.

 

[Haggbart]

Most of BE's mechanics are not new; just tweaks. The only mechanic that I could say is outright new (for Civ) is the tech web - which I haven't really seen people complain about (maybe some balancing is needed, but that is mostly the techs themselves, not the tech web).

Personally, I would have liked to have seen more innovation - especially regarding the aliens (or failing that, something more like SMAC's aliens with a twist).

The leader and seed options in BE are just a slight tweak on the more combined qualities of the leaders in previous Civ games, except they are more quantitative than qualitative (yields rather than unique mechanics). I like the separation (yay, customisation), I dislike how the options are largely weak and unimaginative (so, yay?, customisation that hardly matters).

The trade-routes being local-capped rather than global-capped; better in my opinion (they scale), however, still an arbitrary restriction from my point of view. Also, no innovative UI to deal with the trade-routes obviously increasing drastically in number as the game goes on?

Virtues, just a tweak on previous Civs. I would say the ideologies of Civ 5 were more innovative.

Military units, hardly even tweaks. Not really much more to say on this.

Satellite layer, sort of innovative, sort of just another layer. The no-overlap rules are sort of innovative?

Energy = Gold, Health = Happiness. Tweaks.

Miasma, innovative somewhat, but quite minor. No other new terrain mechanics, tweaks on what already existed. Natural wonders removed - does that count as innovative, or just lazy?

Probably missing something, but that sums up how innovative I feel they have been - I very much can assure you that most of the calls for change are not because "they actually insist on creating new games with new sensibilities and new mechanics and new ideas".

It counts for being lazy forgetting about the affinity system when you make a post about changes between CiV and BE

You might say it's a tweak on ideologies, however the system with unique unit upgrades and bonuses is far beyond the ideology system of BNW. And for me it's a welcome addition since I wanted back something like the civics of Civ4 that had you choose between significant stuff that would change play style, and not only accumulate smaller bonuses (like social policies and virtues)

 

[stealth_nsk]

Cross-continental invasion was possible in Civ 3 and Civ 4 (although it was greatly lame in Civ 3), but you can't compare 1UpT AI with stacks of doom. All the AI needed is to pack units together and send them across the sea. In CBE (and Civ5) required tactics is way deeper.

 

[sprang]

1UpT - This is the big problem. It's also why the units are so bland, no combined arms, etc... Stacks of Doom have their own problems, but at least the AI can build them,