What Video Games Have You Been Playing VII: The Real Ending is Locked Behind a Paywall

[Lexicus]

Civ 4 combat could be pretty boring too.
After a surprise DoW by Montezuma, Shaka or Ragnar I'd usually make a cup of tea or do the dishes while the AI was throwing dozens of chariots or horsemen at my fortified machine guns during the first turn of the war. That turn often took at least two minutes.

Playing with Aggressive AI checked on Emperor, the AI will often spend quite a bit more than two minutes throwing suicide waves of obsolete units at me. I consider the fact that I can do other things (like smoke some weed real quick) during this time to be a feature, not a bug

Anyway, I think this is not a fair comparison. No one really likes spending time waiting for AI actions to resolve. Of course this is boring. The difference is that the part of the Civ 5 turn where I'm actually ordering units around is not a whole lot less boring than waiting for the AI to make its moves, something that has virtually never been the case for me in Civ 4.

I played Civ 5 for a few years but I haven't played it since 2013 and have never had any particular desire to play it since then. Civ 4 otoh I have not only been playing that whole time, but have moved up difficulty levels just in the last two years.

 

[civvver]

I think you guys are barking up the wrong tree here. 1upt is fine but the problem is it forced a lot of the rest of the game to balance around it. I think in the end with all the expansions and patches the did do a decent job with that balance though.

You have to realize civ5 is a drastic departure from older civ games in terms of win conditions. Sure civ4 had religious and un victories and cultural victory but those are kind of just thrown in there as like a side quest you can do. In most games you try to build as large and advanced an empire as possible, then you either go conquer the world or if you think you can't accomplish that in time or are bored by the prospect, then you go into space. Basically both are reliant on tech and production to a lesser extent, you get a tech advantage for that crucial military unit and go conquer everyone, or you're the first to tech into space. Production can make up for some lack of tech and you need it, but tech is more important.

Civ5 is totally different cus it's not like 4 where one machine gun can hold off a million catapults or a couple bombers vs an enemy with no anti air will change the war entirely. Civ5 you can be several iterations of units behind and still win fights. And war is not rewarding. Capturing enemy cities sucks as it increases your unhappiness and policy costs. You actually don't even win by capturing enemy cities, only by capturing their capitals. The other victory types, culture and whatever are in the new ones, feel more like perfectly reasonable alternatives to conquest. And that's by design. If you accept these premises then 1upt seems fine, cus war isn't the end all be all of the game.

The real reason I think civ5 falls short is because it's completely linear in terms of progression. The tech tree has zero branches. You basically reasearch and entire era before moving on. compare to civ4 where there's like 10 different ways to get to scientific method. The fastest isn't always the best, as you need techs along the way from different paths. There's a lot more variety.

Other systems, religion you accumulate points and buy bonuses with them. No switching. Policies, you accumulate points and buy bonuses with them. You catch on? It's all building blocks that led to the same thing. It makes it fun for new players cus they acquire something tangible, free stuff, oh I got this much culture now I get a free bonus, but there's not much strategic thinking. You almost always just choose the best bonuses. Or for varieties sake you pick a new tree. In civ4 a lot of in game stuff affects your decisions and you change paths on a dime. Maybe a neighbor wants you to have a religion and you're going to war soon, you take theocracy. Maybe you need trade bait and do a new research path. Maybe you have tons of rivers so you beeline electricity and state property. It's more varied (until the end game which yes is quite dull and the same every time essentially).

Still I would definitely have finished a lot more civ5 games if the turn performance wasn't so awful.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Update: With just a little nudge to get them started my fellow Roman factions got going, and it is now a tough race to stay ahead of them; similar to vanilla RTW. Battles are far more challenging along the way, and I'm expecting the civil war to be highly entertaining. Credit to this DarthMod. I expect I will have to play a fair number of RTW campaigns before it feels worn out again.

 

[Commodore]

I'm still having fun with RIOT: Civil Unrest. Although I've had to stop playing as both rioters and police and exclusively play as police since the latest update the devs put out has made the game more or less unwinnable as the rioters. Which is a shame since I thought the game was pretty well-balanced, but a lot of people in the community complained about rioters being OP, so the devs nerfed them while seriously buffing the police.

 

[Yeekim]

I was home with a cold most of the weekend, and played 12-15 hours of Subnautica. I agree, this and The Long Dark are the must-have survival games, in my book.

Well, I finished it in Survival Mode. About 40 hrs of quality gameplay.
Might yet try an Ironman playthrough sometime in the future.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Unsurprisingly Civ 6 Rise & Fall.
The new game systems work pretty well and add new layers of strategy and the AI seems much smarter than before, if a bit too aggressive (especially against city states).
Some balance issues of course, mostly with government buildings and governors, but a few quick easy nerfs and sime diplo AI adjustments and Civ 6 can surpass Civ 5 BNW without a second expansion.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Unsurprisingly Civ 6 Rise & Fall.
The new game systems work pretty well and add new layers of strategy and the AI seems much smarter than before, if a bit too aggressive (especially against city states).
Some balance issues of course, mostly with government buildings and governors, but a few quick easy nerfs and sime diplo AI adjustments and Civ 6 can surpass Civ 5 BNW without a second expansion.

What are some of the new mechanics and systems? I have read 0 on this expansion.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

What are some of the new mechanics and systems? I have read 0 on this expansion.

Golden Ages, loyalty and governors.
Cities now radiate loyalty pressure dependng on their size. Your cities reinforce each other and reduce the loyalty of other Civs' cities and vice versa. When a city's loyalty falls to 0 it first rebels and becomes independent and later joins the civilization with the high loyalty pressure. That mans you can flip cities peacefully, or you can conquer a free city without declaring war on the previous owner.
Loyalty is influenced by governors that you can appoint to cities for bonuses and dark and golden ages.
The game grades you and depending on stuff you do you get era points for historic moments, like becoming the first suzerain of a particular city state, having a district with high adjacency or growign a city to size 10, 15 or 20, building wonders etc. You get more points if you're the first to accomlpish something (found a religion, meet all civs, there's a lot of ways to earn points). When the era ends you either enter a dark, normal or golden age depending on your score. During dark ages your cities are less loyal and during golden ages they are more loyal than normal and radiate more pressure. This means that a dark age civs bordering a golden age civ is in danger of secessions from border cities and will have to use governors and loyalty enhancing policies. Loyalty is alsod influence by amenities and can be improved Entertainment District projects or reduced by enemy spies.
It's actually much more balanced than it sounds and makes forward settling ver risky

 

[warpus]

I started playing 2016's DOOM and it is amazing.

Best $5 purchase I probably ever made, and I think that was a year ago. Never tried it out until now, what have I been waiting for?

 

[Ajidica]

Picked up Avernum 3: Ruined World. Standard Spiderweb Software RPG. Graphics a decade old with more exploration and quests than you can shake a stick at! Unlike the previous two Avernum games, you have finally escaped the caves of Avernum* and upon emerging into the surface world, you discover the continent of Valorim is beset by a plague of monsters. If the Kingdom of Avernum is to escape the caves, the monster plagues must be dealt with.
I don't like Avernum 3 quite as much as I liked Avernum 1: Escape from the Pit and Avernum 2: Crystal Souls. The game is far more ambitious in scope than the previous two, with better designed maps and boss fights, but I don't have quite the same emotional investment in the game. In Avernum 1, you were freshly thrown into Avernum and everything was fascinating and alien. In the second game, the Empire invaded Avernum and places you had gotten used to in the first game, such as the city of Cotra, were destroyed by the Empire and the "familiar" caves changed by the Imperial attack. Avernum 3 doesn't really have that. Apart from a handful of characters, such as Erika Redmark, there are no returners from the first or second game.

*Avernum is a massive series of underground caves. The Empire set up a teleporter and anyone who broke the law -criminals, heretics, rebels, malcontents, or those who attracted the wrath of an Imperial office- got thrown into Avernum.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I started playing 2016's DOOM and it is amazing.
Best $5 purchase I probably ever made, and I think that was a year ago. Never tried it out until now, what have I been waiting for?

^ I had motion sickness from Doom so its a no-no for me

Making the wastelands great Again !
Sent my Ghouls to Boston Airport, I figured they would just leave by themselves because there is no water, food, beds or security. Then I remember Little Timmy trapped in the fridge with nothing to eat or drink for 200 years
So I'll just let them be. Honestly its weird that you cant build a water purification plant on the sea which is right next to your settlement.Maybe I'll build some scavenging stations for them, they can just survive by scavenging

I made the Castle my main base again, repaired all the damaged walls with concrete foundations and massive amounts of Auto repeating lazer turrets

 

[Quintillus]

I love that we're still having Civ4 vs Civ5 debates. I agree with Lexicus about, "The difference is that the part of the Civ 5 turn where I'm actually ordering units around is not a whole lot less boring than waiting for the AI to make its moves, something that has virtually never been the case for me in Civ 4." The linearness and lack of branching that civver mentioned, and the challenge in war being ordering your units around in a way that doesn't result in a traffic jam, certainly contributed to that.

As for waiting a long time for the AI to resolve, I remember one Civ3 game where it took 10 or 12 minutes for a single AI's attacks against my units to resolve. I had landed workers to build a fortress on a mountain in or just outside their land, and then landed a few dozen Infantry supported by a bunch of Artillery on that spot prior to declaring war. They then attacked with a couple hundred units. In the end, I'd landed enough units to repel them, but despite the huge defensive advantages of the position, my landing force was bruised. The war was won, though - just had to wait for my Cavalry reinforcements to land, and then it was pretty quick progress since they'd expended most of their troops.

My recent games are Factorio and now Cities: Skylines. Haven't played enough of the latter yet to determine if I prefer it to Sim City 4. I miss the time-based charts of SC4, but there are some notable improvements like being able to place bus stops by the side of the road without taking up a tile.

 

[Snerk]

Rise and Fall looks alright but it's not really adding the things I'm missing from the game.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I started a game of Rise and Fall over the weekend, but haven't gotten very far, around turn 250 of a 750-turn game. One thing I remember reading from a developer was that they wanted to juice up the late game, which it desperately needed. I haven't played the last 1/3rd of a game of Civ in a year. So far, the new systems haven't tremendously improved the game for me, but I'm going to see it through to the end and see if the late-game has been improved.

The "Loyalty" system: So far, it's done nothing for me. However, a friend theorized that Loyalty might dissuade the AI from founding cities all over creation, and maintain its national borders better than it used to. In the early stages of my game, I haven't seen the AI flinging Settlers hither and yon, so maybe he was right.

"Era Score" and Dark, Golden and Heroic Ages: I seemed to acquire enough Era Points just by doing what I normally do. I had one Golden Age, which didn't seem to do much. It improves your cities' Loyalty, but that had no effect on my game, as it was. I chose a +10% bonus to Eurekas as my Golden Age bonus, but they reduced the normal Eureka bonus from 50% to 40%. I think the menu of Golden Age bonuses you can select changes with the Era, so maybe later Golden Ages have more impact. I haven't experienced a Dark or Heroic Age yet. I saw one of the AIs suffer a Dark Age while his neighbor had a Golden Age, and two cities on the border flipped allegiances.

The new civs, leaders, Natural Wonders and World Wonders seem cool, but not game-changing. I'm playing Poundmaker of the Cree. I haven't built any of the new Districts or used any of the new units yet.

I still crushed the AI like empty soda cans in wars, though. The AI still doesn't really put up a fight. It remains to be seen whether the new systems will balance things in favor of the AI, but fighting a war against them is still basically an exploit.

I got one "Emergency", which seemed a little overpowered. Korea took a City-State, and then didn't defend it. I liberated it easily and was showered with Gold in addition to getting the CS bonus for Suzerainty for a while. The latter has always been the reward for liberating a captured City-State, and this new "Emergency" system only makes it more lucrative, which the human player really didn't need. But maybe this "Emergencies" system is something that really blooms in the late game.

The City Governors seem cool, giving you some more levers to pull and moving them around to best utilize their bonuses gives you something else to think about.

 

[civvver]

^ I had motion sickness from Doom so its a no-no for me

Me too, every first person game gives me a headache eventually which really sucks. There's a few highly rated ones I really want to finish- bioshock and infinite, doom, new wolfenstein, dishonored, new deus ex games, dead island. I struggle to play any of them for more than 20 minutes. I also loaded up dark forces one of my favorite childhood games and it was god awful the headache.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Thanks a lot guys for bringing They Are Billions to my attention.

I remember I used to have free time.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Thanks a lot guys for bringing They Are Billions to my attention.

I remember I used to have free time.

You're welcome. What difficulty are you up to? I got stuck at 60% on the Peaceful Lowlands, so I took a break to play Subnautica. I haven't played TAB in 2 or 3 weeks, but I still occasionally find myself thinking about whether people are right about skipping Soldiers and going straight to Snipers.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

You're welcome. What difficulty are you up to? I got stuck at 60% on the Peaceful Lowlands, so I took a break to play Subnautica. I haven't played TAB in 2 or 3 weeks, but I still occasionally find myself thinking about whether people are right about skipping Soldiers and going straight to Snipers.

I beat the first map on 30% after a lot of tries. Didn't read anything on the internet, just dying a lot and figuring out good habits. Second map on 60% took me 4 tries, but I got a very nice map on the 4th try. I ended up on a peninsula in with only 2 exists south east and south west. Which made completing that very easy.

I don't build a lot of soldiers either. Seems very much as of the ranger is the better bang for the buck. Snipers are replacement for ranger units which are defending the base, so the ranger can start scouting the map. Usually about 25 of them will do.

 

[Akka]

Golden Ages, loyalty and governors.
Cities now radiate loyalty pressure dependng on their size. Your cities reinforce each other and reduce the loyalty of other Civs' cities and vice versa. When a city's loyalty falls to 0 it first rebels and becomes independent and later joins the civilization with the high loyalty pressure. That mans you can flip cities peacefully, or you can conquer a free city without declaring war on the previous owner.
Loyalty is influenced by governors that you can appoint to cities for bonuses and dark and golden ages.

So, basically, Civ4 culture. That's supposed to be "new" ?

 

[Synobun]

That loyalty system sounds like something vanilla should have had given how much the game screams at you for amenity and housing shortages (yet nothing happens).