What video games have you been playing? ΚΔ (24)? More like ΚΔ,Ζ,ΤΞΕ!

[Akka]

On the other hand, is there anything that you don't end up annoying with rather quickly, including games you replay after being annoyed with them previously several times ?

 

[Senethro]

It does seem to be a recurring theme!

And maybe a common cause is that you disagree with the author/designer over how the story/mechanic should work and seem to pick fights with them as if they're an antagonist, and not someone you need to work with to have an experience. If they're half-good and you're half listening, you should be able to get it.

 

[Kyriakos]

It does seem to be a recurring theme!

And maybe a common cause is that you disagree with the author/designer over how the story/mechanic should work and seem to pick fights with them as if they're an antagonist, and not someone you need to work with to have an experience. If they're half-good and you're half listening, you should be able to get it.

On the other hand, is there anything that you don't end up annoying with rather quickly, including games you replay after being annoyed with them previously several times ?

It's just that games do take a lot of time, and at some point I don't commit
I like Disco Elysium. It's a bit on the long side, though. Maybe there is a setting where important objects don't just get highlighted when you right-click (?), ala old adventure games, which would have made it (due to size) pretty tedious.
Yes, in the past I could commit to spending a month on an adventure, but now that's not possible.

 

[Kyriakos]

Hm, Civ6 is imo quite incredibly boring...

 

[Voidwalkin]

Hm, Civ6 is imo quite incredibly boring...

I enjoyed it, but it was all power trip.

I think what really hurt it is that combat AI is so terrible it can't defeat other AIs with walled cities(and is thrashed by a modestly experienced player). Big empires don't form consequently.

You can therefore totally ignore foreign affairs free and easy. There's no suspense because there's no danger.

 

[Sommerswerd]

What's most frustrating about the Civ AI is that's it really mostly about combat that everyone is complaining about, and the solution is so simple and obvious... just bring back the SoD/unit stacking.

1UPT is a failure. It was an interesting experiment but it failed. The AI can't manage it. Just scrap it and go back to 1UPT. Another option is to adopt the Total War series format, where combat becomes it's own minigame, but that would totally change the game.

 

[Ajidica]

I enjoyed it, but it was all power trip.

I think what really hurt it is that combat AI is so terrible it can't defeat other AIs with walled cities(and is thrashed by a modestly experienced player). Big empires don't form consequently.

You can therefore totally ignore foreign affairs free and easy. There's no suspense because there's no danger.

I had two issues with Civ6, one is personal, the other is part of the game.
On the personal level, the districts system triggers my decision paralysis hardcore. I can totally see how and why people love the district mechanic and all it brings to the game, it just isn't for me.

The second one is that the warmonger penalties are too strong. I can understand they wanted to make conquest a strategy that requires more investment. In Civ4 the default strategy was to conquer your continent by the gunpowder age; then dash to a science victory. Maybe some light wars in the late game against backward civs or because you are bored. Civ6 clearly wants to cut down on the "conquer your neighbors then turtle". To do that, you need more viable civs in the late game.
They have the big diplo penalties for conquering your neighbor, which basically means you are screwed diplomatically for the rest of the game. I can understand that.
But you also get big diplo penalties for conquering an opponent's cities; which basically means you either have a hate-filled enemy on your border for the rest of the game or you conquer the rest of them. There is no way to adjust borders without warfare. The smallest dispute over "I wanted that hill tile" turns into a apocalyptic war.

Incidentally, I agree with Sommerswerd the 1upt is a bad idea. Maybe impose a penalty on a SOD if it gets too big, or move collateral damage against units in open away from siege weapons to cut down on catapult spam. The AI can't handle it and the way Civ6 cut down on the 'carpet of doom' from Civ5 was just to make each unit more of an investment. Not a bad idea, but if you get into a war it just snowballs going on a military campaign.

 

[Voidwalkin]

On the personal level, the districts system triggers my decision paralysis hardcore.

Interesting perspective. Personally, I just slap a campus down and call it a day. Occasionally a threatre.

The AI doesn't play its policy cards correctly, and doesn't prioritize districts correctly. Even with weak adj bonuses, I've still got more campuses because the AI built too many holy sites, and doesn't use the bang bang enlightenment civic, bafflingly(do devs want players to win all their games?)

The second one is that the warmonger penalties are too strong

This is a problem for me, though. I don't think I've ever played a 6 game in which I wasn't hated. I'm not a peaceful builder by any stretch. I didn't always conquer post-classical in every game, though I was hated as a warmonger well into the modern period.

Just broke immersion. It's not like states today hate China for its military expansion south of the Yangtze 2000 years ago. In the 6-verse they sure do.

 

[Synobun]

I had two issues with Civ6, one is personal, the other is part of the game.
On the personal level, the districts system triggers my decision paralysis hardcore. I can totally see how and why people love the district mechanic and all it brings to the game, it just isn't for me.

Yeah, I hated the district system in Endless Legend and was afraid it'd bleed into other 4X games. And lo and behold, it was in Civ 6. I like building everything and I don't like memorizing long strings of actions, so a system designed around every decision in the early game potentially screwing you over later because you didn't know plopping down a thing in that tile would someday prevent you from building something better is just lame.

 

[Voidwalkin]

Yeah, I hated the district system in Endless Legend and was afraid it'd bleed into other 4X games. And lo and behold, it was in Civ 6. I like building everything and I don't like memorizing long strings of actions, so a system designed around every decision in the early game potentially screwing you over later because you didn't know plopping down a thing in that tile would someday prevent you from building something better is just lame.

At one point early in 6's dev life, I invaded China to secure access to aluminum, a resource I didn't think I had.

Before conquering their city with an aluminum deposit, I checked the strategic resource tab. It turned out I'd had aluminum all along: I had built a district over the deposit in the ancient era unknowingly, it did not show on the map, and I did not have to build a mine to access it. Go figure.

Sorry about that, Qin. America thought it needed that aluminum for our Area 51 blackops.

 

[Kyriakos]

I expected something a lot more lively, although the last Civ game I played for many hours is still CivIII (iirc only played CivIV for half an hour).
I hated the 1UPT, of course, but also how the worker can't build roads and is used up after a couple of improvements.
As for the graphics, I wasn't impressed. On that front, CivVII looks considerably better - but is already burdened by other issues.
Ultimately I am not sure that adding so many different strategic options (eg city improvement placement, religious and other hierarchies) ends up "adding" to the gaming experience- but I only played for a little over 2 hours. It's a bit like being given a piano that has thousands of keys, instead of tens; yes, in theory the compositions can be more elaborate, but in practice they are doomed to be considerably looser.

 

[Voidwalkin]

Ultimately I am not sure that adding so many different strategic options (eg city improvement placement, religious and other hierarchies) ends up "adding" to the gaming experience- but I only played for a little over 2 hours.

I don't think it does.

New mechanics like 1upt, ranged attacks, districts, adjacencies and policy cards all add complexities which grow even more complex as they interact. AI cannot handle it.

Given that it's overwhelmingly an SP game, the AI plays at a lower and lower ELO. Once the player gets over the learning curve, it's immediately a 450 ELO player vs an 800. As the player gets skilled, it's a 1450 against the same 450 player.

 

[Kyriakos]

I dislike how almost all games by now have mobile-game traits and virtually the same UI

 

[Sommerswerd]

I expected something a lot more lively, although the last Civ game I played for many hours is still CivIII (iirc only played CivIV for half an hour).
I hated the 1UPT, of course, but also how the worker can't build roads and is used up after a couple of improvements.
As for the graphics, I wasn't impressed. On that front, CivVII looks considerably better - but is already burdened by other issues.
Ultimately I am not sure that adding so many different strategic options (eg city improvement placement, religious and other hierarchies) ends up "adding" to the gaming experience- but I only played for a little over 2 hours. It's a bit like being given a piano that has thousands of keys, instead of tens; yes, in theory the compositions can be more elaborate, but in practice they are doomed to be considerably looser.

I like the Civ 6 graphics much better than Civ 5, but I also like Civ 4 graphics better than Civ 5. I still think Civ 4 is the best iteration so far. Maybe (hopefully) Civ 7 will eclipse them all, but if they stick with the ridiculous 1UPT, I don' think there is any hope.

Civ 6 does have the best opening song (besides Civ 4's Baba Yetu of course) though.

 

[Synobun]

Civ 6 does have the best opening song (besides Civ 4's Baba Yetu of course) though.

Agreed. "Sogno di Volare" is a banger. I don't even remember what Civ 5's song was.

Tin ("Baba Yetu" and "Sogno di Volare") is doing Civ 7's song again, so it should be a good one.

 

[Kyriakos]

I played some Ara: History Untold (version 1.1).
This... is more like that old Civilization boardgame. Not a real 4x game, imo. Basically it is a turn-based version of Settlers, where you manage resource chains - only worse, because afaik the chain is automatic as long as you produce the stuff needed.
War is minimalistic, and pretty much everything could have been a tabletop with cards.

I don't see the appeal, at all.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I hated the stacks of doom. I prefer the tactical decisions you need to make with 1UPT.

The civ 7 solution with a commander who pulls the surrounding troops into it's tile looks interesting.

 

[Kyriakos]

Eh, is there any (bad) ending of the mercenary tribunal in Disco Elysium where they show the deaths? Eg if you survive but Kim and the others die.
It's rather anticlimactic and... stupid? I expected the game to be darker than 'superhero cops'.

I decided to try Fear and Hunger.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I hated the stacks of doom. I prefer the tactical decisions you need to make with 1UPT.

The civ 7 solution with a commander who pulls the surrounding troops into it's tile looks interesting.

The "Total War" series has the best approach, but the problem is that it goes so far that it would make Civ almost into an entirely different game. Total War doesn't show "tiles" but of course that is an illusion because movement has to be based on some sort of computer calculation. I actually prefer it that way, because it adds a little bit of mystery/guesswork, thus simulated randomness, to how far you can actually move your units on a given turn.

The way it works in "Total War", for those who aren't already familiar, is that the entire "army" moves on a single tile, and is symbolized by one "Commander" icon, who may actually have multiple "hero/commander" units contained within it, along with the rest of the army they are commanding. When you attack with the army, you are presented, like Civ, with "odds" of victory, and you can either let the combat auto-resolve, essentially instantly, like Civ, with a cool little animation of one icon/commander defeating the other, or you can elect to actually play out the entire battle manually yourself.

If you choose this option, you enter a combat minigame, where all the armies are laid out in their splendor as individual units, and you have to play a full blown RTS game where you control your whole army against the opposing army, with all the RTS tactics of live melee fighters, artillery, ranged units, spell casters, etc. It's a pretty glorious format but obviously there would be some drawbacks.

One thing I enjoy about Total War, is that by electing the RTS option, sometimes I can defeat the opposing side, even when the calculated odds are not in my favor and sometimes I can't, no matter how many times I choose to retry the battle (which the game allows). So sometimes I see the odds are against me and I try to fight it out and win against the odds, sometimes I try to fight it out once and lose and accept the loss and sometimes I try to fight several times, lose and then finally accept the loss. Sometimes I even replay a fight where I won, just because I think that I could win more decisively. However, most fights, I just let the computer auto resolve, win or lose, because I don't feel like doing a whole RTS battle for every single fight.

I actually wish Civ would do things more like that, but that would turn Civ into a Total War game rather than a Civ game.

 

[Voidwalkin]

Played Medieval 2 extensively.

Didn't love the heros they added in recent installments.

Medieval 2 was actually fairly easy if you exploited certain mechanics. Dread/chivalry was decidedly weighted towards dread. It added very harsh morale penalties on troops near your general. This could be combined with withering arrows and well-timed cavalry charges to rout enemies on impact, the effects snowballing down the entire line. Really, really reduced your attrition.

My favorite battles were always devoid of those shenanigans. Without a general, I once managed to defend a castle with a full stack against 4 Mongol full stacks, no cheese. Very close run thing. They exhausted all of their troops in a long battle of maneuver while taking unfavorable attrition. Those were the memorable ones: the addition of bonuses are cool but ultimately added power creep that just sorta undermined the game.