What video games have you been playing V: the return of the subtitle

[jackelgull]

I think, that on release, Civ6 shouldn't have MP, and instead MP should be released with a DLC, if we're going that way. How much better would things be if that happened with some games...

You've lost me. What do you mean?

 

[Arakhor]

Weren't Civ II & III released with that policy?

Maybe Civ VI should follow the same model as the new Dungeon Keeper mobile game? Yeah, it takes a long time to play, so we quite understand why you'd only want to spend a few minutes each day playing it. It's only 6 local currency to pay for five more minutes each day!

 

[gay_Aleks]

As in, instead of wasting manhours into designing MP, it could go into making a better game. I think Stardock did that with one of the GalCivs.

 

[Commodore]

As in, instead of wasting manhours into designing MP, it could go into making a better game. I think Stardock did that with one of the GalCivs.

GalCiv2, specifically. And that game was pretty amazing because of it. It's one of the very few games that doesn't have a completely brain dead AI.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Got Rogue State in a bundle for 2 bucks.

I'm from Basenji and I say kill 'em all!

Spoiler :

Hope he didn't want to stay at a nice hotel.

Spoiler :

 

[Commodore]

I think, that the idea of UPT isn't bad - it's just suffering from poor execution. Had Firaxis executed it properly, with 5-units-per-tile (for an example), it wouldn't overshadow the good features that Civ5 had.

You know, I hated it at first, but now I actually love the one unit per hex. It actually forces players to think tactically and strategically as to how they are going to maneuver their units to get the maximum effectiveness out of them. It means you have to think about every single move you make instead of just building an army and sending them at the enemy like in previous Civ games.

 

[Senethro]

I liked it at first and then I stopped liking it as soon as stacks of doom turned into carpets of doom.

The best implementation I've seen yet of it was Endless Legend where units were grouped into armies, and if two armies encountered each other then they unfolded into a small instance using the world map terrain as the battlefield and 1upt rules.

 

[PhroX]

You know, I hated it at first, but now I actually love the one unit per hex. It actually forces players to think tactically and strategically as to how they are going to maneuver their units to get the maximum effectiveness out of them. It means you have to think about every single move you make instead of just building an army and sending them at the enemy like in previous Civ games.

I liked the idea, the problem was that the maps were far too small (in terms of number of tiles) for the whole strategic and tactical maneuvering to really work. If the game had been on a scale such that there were, say, 20 tiles between neighboring cities instead of 5-6, then 1UPT could've been great, but as it was there just wasn't the space.

 

[Commodore]

I liked the idea, the problem was that the maps were far too small (in terms of number of tiles) for the whole strategic and tactical maneuvering to really work. If the game had been on a scale such that there were, say, 20 tiles between neighboring cities instead of 5-6, then 1UPT could've been great, but as it was there just wasn't the space.

Eh, I never had a problem with map size hindering movement. Of course I always, always, always play on the huge Earth map and never play on randomly generated maps.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It's a pretty common problem but I feel the root issue here is not actually 1UPT rather crappy AI that forces the programmers to give massive bonuses to the AI. This encourages the AI to spam out massive carpets of units then use them poorly. Another tragic side effect of crappy AI is that it doesn't know how to use the carpets it has and even if you are not at war with them, you won't be able to move across the map due to blockages caused by poorly positioned carpets of units.

Playing on custom and/or huge maps will ameliorate this issue to a huge extent.

 

[Commodore]

So I broke down and bought Starships just to check it out, and I honestly don't see what all the hate is about. Sure, it's not the most mind blowing game out there, but I'm still having a pretty fun time playing it.

Personally, I think all the hate towards this game comes from the fact that people had unrealistic expectations. Everything I've been reading gives me the impression that people were expecting a proper Civilization game set in space just because it had the Sid Meier name on it, and that's never what this game was intended to be. Once you take that expectation away, and judge the game on it's own, it's actually not that bad. It's obviously a casual game, meant as a time waster and it fills that role quite well in my opinion. I have been playing it while waiting for other, much larger games to download and install.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Everyone expected Alpha Centauri 2. When they didn't get it, they raged hard.

 

[cardgame]

I've been investing a lot of time into Squad in between sessions of Rome II.

Is it weird that I'd rather be a squad member than the leader? Even though I can be a decent SL, I'd rather not play as one most of the time

 

[jackelgull]

Returned to playing XCOM Enemy Within after rage quitting it two weeks ago. I'm actually doing decent. I have four satellites up, MEC troopers are online, and recently I kicked but in Sydney Australia without my troopers. I faced 3 sectoids, 3 thin men, three robot thingies, and two seekers, and finished them all without taking losses, and only one unit got lightly wounded. Probably my best battlefield performance so far.

Of course, this game, I also lost Egypt, and four squaddies in a brutal rescue civilians mission which I failed, but it isn't a loss I can't bounce back from.

Also been playing Civ5 with the more cities mod. Lovely, just lovely. UPT is an annoying mechanic which leads to alot of traffic jams, but it isn't unbearable. I just wish my workers could stack and work on improvements together.

 

[Commodore]

I'm planning on doing an epic Civilization saga in which I attempt to form a story of my civilization across Civilization V, Beyond Earth, and Starships. To do this, I have grouped all the Civ V civilizations to correspond to one of the sponsors in Beyond Earth, which will then correspond to a federation in Starships. For Civ V, I will play as a random civ against all random opponents on the huge Earth map with only the Science victory enabled to act as a lead-in to Beyond Earth. If I win, then I will move on to Beyond Earth and play as the sponsor that corresponds to my randomly selected civilization in Civ V and my opponents will also correspond to the randomly selected opponents in Civ V. Prior to playing Beyond Earth I will randomly select an affinity to follow, which will dictate what type of victory I go for and will determine which affinity I play as in Starships if I win my game of Beyond Earth.

Here are the civilization/sponsor associations I came up with according to what I have read about the background for the sponsors in Beyond Earth (for civs that don't have a direct correlation with a sponsor, I went with the one that made the most sense geographically):

Al Falah: Morocco, Assyria, Persia, Carthage, Arabia, Egypt, Ottomans
INTEGR: Germany, Austria
North Sea Alliance: Celts, England, Sweden, Netherlands
Chungsu: Japan (because Japan is not stated to be part of the Pan Asian Cooperative, and there is no Korean civ in Civ V)
American Reclamation Corporation: Iroquois, Aztecs, Maya, Shoshone, America
Pan Asian Cooperative: Mongolia, China
People's African Union: Songhai, Ethiopia, Zulus
Kavithan Protectorate: India
Brasilia: Brazil
Franco-Iberia: Rome, Venice, Spain, Portugal, France
Polystralia: Indonesia, Siam
Slavic Federation: Greece, Huns, Poland, Russia, Byzantium

Since Starships doesn't include the leaders from Rising Tide, I associated the sponsors from the expansion with the leader in Starships they would have been closest to culturally and is as follows:

Al Falah: Kavitha
INTEGR: Koslov
North Sea Alliance: Elodie
Chungsu: Sochua

 

[jackelgull]

Good luck. Looks like a lot of work.

 

[Zack]

How is Beyond Earth?

 

[Commodore]

How is Beyond Earth?

I think it's pretty fun in the early and mid game, but the late game gets a bit boring. That's because in the early and mid game you are not only competing with your rivals, but also trying to determine how to deal with the indigenous life on the planet. Basically, you have to decide if you are going to respect their right to live and eventually form a symbiotic relationship with them or if you are going to go all Starship Troopers on them and wage a war of extermination against the bugs. The alien life in Beyond Earth is definitely a much more interesting mechanic than the barbarians of past Civ games.

Good luck. Looks like a lot of work.

Eh, it sounds more complicated than it really is. It's just a matter of making note of which civilizations are in my game of Civ V, and that pretty much determines the rest. I'm looking forward to doing this though as it's going to be fun once I get to Starships and imagining that the galactic federation I have built started as that small group of primitive settlers in 4000 BC in Civ V.

 

[Zack]

I guess my main concern is that it seems like a re-skinned Civ V. Which doesn't make it bad, but... I already own Civ V, you know?

 

[Commodore]

I guess my main concern is that it seems like a re-skinned Civ V. Which doesn't make it bad, but... I already own Civ V, you know?

That is a pretty common complaint about it, and it definitely has some merit. However, it is my opinion that while it doesn't really add anything new, it does improve on a lot of the mechanics that were introduced in Civ V.