Useless but funny features, eg. palace

[timmey_o_tool]

Hey everybody,

I very much like the little but completely useless for the gameplay features... Examples : palace or throne room, advisors, city view of civ 1 and 2 (and maybe 3, don't remember exactly), little speeches with new technologies and so on...

What would you like to see in ?

I also loved the wonder movies in civ 2. Some useless buildings to be built just to have some nice looking cities. Or the super awesome Civ5 april joke, fight of the leaders....

 

[PieceOfMind]

Sid would be sad you're calling the Palace feature useless. A reward for reaching various milestones is something many would consider good game design.

Anyway, I see your point - the feature has no effect on gameplay - only the player's possible enjoyment of the game experience.

 

[Willem]

Anyway, I see your point - the feature has no effect on gameplay - only the player's possible enjoyment of the game experience.

Or lack thereof. I used to get rather annoyed having my game interupted by some useless fluff. I'm glad it's gone, hopefully never to return unless it actually does something.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I really hope that the Palace Does return.

1. It should be more customized based on what you actually have done (with a clearer connection between game events and the 'development' of it)
2. It should show up in the diplomacy screen as the background (AI players get a palace too)

 

[PieceOfMind]

Or lack thereof. I used to get rather annoyed having my game interupted by some useless fluff. I'm glad it's gone, hopefully never to return unless it actually does something.

Yep. In fact the thing that irked me about the Palace feature in civ1 was that the palace screen would just pop up at seemingly arbitrary times. I understood so little about the game back then that I don't think I even realised it was for any particular milestone. To this day I still don't know what points the palace came up.

Maybe it was written in the manual somewhere.

Anyway, things that can be described as "fluff" as you said should IMO always be disable-able, particularly if they are slow to get rid of when they pop up. IIRC you could disable the Palace feature in civ1.

 

[Crazy George]

After a while, all the extras get turned off. How long can you watch the same wonder movie? But the first time I see those movies, especially after a long fight to finally build them, they can send chills down my back. Maybe I'm just sappy, but I look forward to the new wonder movies that will ship with C5.

And as to advisors, I'm just hoping their advice will be so good, I'll never want to turn them off. And for that to be the case, all they really have to do is tell me what the AI would do if it was in my shoes. It would be sort of nice to have a cabinet of advisors consisting of Monty, Ghandi, and the rest.

Now as to a useless but funny extras, watching those two argue it out could fit the bill, not that they would use the same methods of persuasion...

 

[timmey_o_tool]

Sid would be sad you're calling the Palace feature useless. A reward for reaching various milestones is something many would consider good game design.

Anyway, I see your point - the feature has no effect on gameplay - only the player's possible enjoyment of the game experience.

What I meant is just that the features are actually not giving you any advantage for wining the game, but surely, it is because it rewards you for something that I like it.

And of course it should be disable to disable them. But I repeat my question, if anybody likes those "useless" features, what are your ideas ?

 

[Truronian]

I loved city view. Much joy would be had if it returns.

 

[PieceOfMind]

What I meant is just that the features are actually not giving you any advantage for wining the game, but surely, it is because it rewards you for something that I like it.

And of course it should be disable to disable them. But I repeat my question, if anybody likes those "useless" features, what are your ideas ?

The civ2 animated advisors and civ2 wonder videos are the stand-outs IMO for the whole series. Anything that adds a bit of personality to an otherwise fairly lifeless game is a big plus.
Civ4 had animated 3d leader heads but they never spoke a word. It was always a bit weird to conduct diplomacy by having a staring contest! If the devs go to the effort to animate in 3d a leader IMO they really ought to give a bit of life to the leader as well by making him/her speak. Of course, it probably takes a lot more resources than we'd first think. Lip syncing graphics is probably a pain in the butt and voice actors possibly aren't cheap, especially ones who can sound reasonably authentic.

A useless but fun (in a weird way) feature of Civ4 that the previous versions didn't have was the "globe view". I make this point in light of discussions about a spherical map that keep coming up. It was cool to finally be able to look at the planet like it was a real globe, with the stars in the background. It was also startling to notice you could see more than 180 degrees around the earth at the same time!

Regarding city view, my understanding was that they removed it for Civ4 because it was made redundant when they moved to 3d graphics. Now you can just literally zoom into any city you please. I don't really miss the city view and for each game that had it I only used it a couple of times before realising it wasn't very good. They never looked like cities, more like a bunch of buildings standing there like trophies.

 

[BlackSpy]

This is from a thread I started on Apolyton a few years ago for 'Pointless Improvements"

Lots of suggestions can be found all over the forums pointing out some excellent additions and tweaks to the game. Most of them are heavy on programmer time but very few make demands of the artists and animators, but they must be looking for things to do too.

Some things I'd love to see

- Early units accessorise themselves with the skins of slain animals. Imagine a victorious warrior swathing himself in a lion skin!
- Resource animals animate in response to wild animals coming into or near their tile
- Map tile graphics change with the ages. Tiles in view are always the realistic hues they are today, but tiles in fog of war take on the attributes of maps and charts of suitable antiquity.
- Animated wagons and boats traverse the land and sea to show the trade routes of the world (much like Rome TW).
- The option to select the permanent location of wonders relative to your city. A little drag and drop ability the turn it is built so if you have a super cool spot to place the Great Lighthouse or whatever you get to choose it and keep it there. I don’t mind the libraries and temples being re-jigged all the time as I don’t really believe it’s the same one for all those millennia, I would like the wonders to choose a spot and stick to it though, anywhere in the nine ‘home’ tiles.
- The menu screen with the earth cycling through day and night are very evocative and really do hint at the march of man. I’d love it if it was possible to turn on a night and day cycle on the game map. You wouldn’t ever play with it on obviously but I can’t believe I’m the only player who sometimes just scrolls around the world admiring it all. It was very atmospheric in Sim City and the menu screen hint at what it could do here.
- I'd quite like it if all the workers that had run out of things to do did various entertaining animations, juggling or somersaults or whatever. Maybe even go and pick bananas or have picnics. Would be cool.

 

[bite]

I always liked the palace construction, it was a little bonus to tell you how you were doing (as long of course it was easily skip-able for those who don;t want to do it). it was those little things that added a moment of variety to the game.

 

[Lutefisk Mafia]

Anyone ever play Merchant Prince: Machiavelli? It is a cool DOS era trading game that takes place in the time of Marco Polo.

Anyway, one of the things that I liked about that game was that the unexplored areas were covered with a FOW "map" that looked like an age of antiquity paper map. More importantly, the outlines of the continents and some barb city locations were hinted at. The general shape of things was correct, but the details highly inaccurate. Also, the further you got away from the starting area, the bigger the errors became.

This was a fun and sort of useful mechanic that I'd like to see in Civ 5.

 

[Janig]

Lutefisk Mafia that sounds like a cool feature but Im sure it would detract from the current godgame angle, particularly in relation to the importance of technological advances.


re the palace

it was those little things that added a moment of variety to the game.

to expand on this the palace was good for immersion because the standard civ2 graphics sucked. to have a decent image of ur supposed palace was good. the hardcore players ofcourse dont need help with immersion so many ppl ofcourse tire of the palace.

Everything happens for a reason imo. I want civ to be a good fun streamlined, realisitic game where I can play to lead my civilization through time, making important choices like the design of my palace and what to build in my cities.

 

[Mango Elephant]

I loved city view. Much joy would be had if it returns.

I dislikes how in Civ 3 the city view would only change when you got a new building, never when you grow in population. It's a bit annoying when your 18 size city is almost identicle to your size 4 city.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

I loved city view. Much joy would be had if it returns.

As far as I can tell, the city view was replaced by the graphic enhancement that each city and all of its buildings actually appear on the map, instead of having static images to represent cities based on size. In essence, in Civ4 you're always in the city view.

 

[awesome]

yeah, what he said. even though a ground view of some kind would be awesome.

 

[kdr777]

What I miss is seeing the military troops marching in the city when you conquer it

 

[IronDraconis]

I disagree with the premise of this entire thread, to say something is "useless" in Civ in terms of these enjoyable features mentioned is absolute folly as the very mentioning of these features describes them as "fun" or "enjoyable" making them very useful for the enjoyment of the player. Are these "essential" features? maybe not, but to say that they are "useless" is absolute folly. I understand and agree that some of these features above stated do not have impact on the game mechanics, however, these features do have use for the players enjoyment and thus greatly enhance gameplay (or hinder gameplay depending on if you like the feature or not). But if none of us really like "fringe" type game enhancers then why do we expect better graphics, quicker battles, flowing landscape, and realistic odds? if our enjoyment and the game itself is only about game mechanics then we all should be programmers enjoying the mechanics behind the game and not the wonderful product that covers up the ugly math of game mechanics.

 

[awesome]

the point is that it wouldn't really be that big of a deal if these things weren't in the game, but just the fact that they are makes it just a little more fun

 

[Ataxerxes]

I loved city view. Much joy would be had if it returns.

I agree completely. Showing all the buildings crammed together in CivIV wasn't the same. I really enjoyed the city view in Civ3. Nice thing was that, unlike palace updates, you requested it, it didn't just pop up suddenly.