What is it with you people, "more more more"? I say we make all civics currently in game useful before adding a single one more! Environmentalism needs a boost badly to make it competitive with State Property, serfdom needs a boost to be competitive with slavery or caste system and emancipation could be something useful too.
What We Must Need In Civ 5
- Thread starter Ahovking
- Start date
What is it with you people, "more more more"? I say we make all civics currently in game useful before adding a single one more! Environmentalism needs a boost badly to make it competitive with State Property, serfdom needs a boost to be competitive with slavery or caste system and emancipation could be something useful too.
Ahovking
Cyber Nations
You can chose who smart the AIs are not how hard the game is or how fast the AIs move But How Smart.
I would think that as a general rule, more options is better. Because more options means more variety of strategy possible means a better strategy game.
"More" doesn't always mean more.
For example more units don't always mean a more challenging, unique or fun game. If a badly planned unit is added, it makes other units useless. Or is useless itself. Which all adds to players quickly realizing which units are good to build and which ones are worthless. The end result - a stack of 2-3 unit types that is invariably the same. Strategy? Nope. Just stacking.
More civics don't always result in more strategic options. The current system has a few strategical jewels that allow for many different playstyles, like pacifism (lots of GPP vs military) and state property (corps vs workshop paradise). If a badly planned civic is added, it'll be either be so powerful that switching into it is a no-brianer (resulting in several other civics being rendered useless - typo intended BTW) or then again it could be so lame that it has very few potential uses.
Some would argue that environmentalism is one of lame ones, and that state property is a no-brianer. I think the corporation tradeoff is enough for state property (although it's still quite powerful) but there are a few civics that could use a facelift.
Environmentalism is often cited as one of the worst civics in the game. Environmentalism is just plain bad - the only good things about it are the extra commerce from windmills and preserves and the increased health, but they're not game breakingly good. The bad sides: High/medium upkeep (can't remember which in the latest version), corporate maintenance, and not getting workshop paradises, free specialists or trade routes like in other economy civics.
Very few viable strategies are actually supported by environmentalism. Before any more civics are added, I'd like to see the old ones be balanced. No useless civics - every single one has to serve some situation or strategy.
Sure, it is essentially about quality and not quantity, but if you can have more of something good, then it is really 'more'. Having more civics allows for a diversity of options, rather than a duplication of options, so unlike having something akin to a stack, you have a greater variety of unit types, actually allowing for more strategy. I mean, of course the new civic options have to be good ones, but with the large number of governmental types in existence, rather than just the simple choices given to us in Civ 4, there is the ability to have more options of a high quality, rather than more options that wouldn't be used.
That's quite what I mean. Unfortunately Civ's combat mechanics don't allow for interesting and playable at the same time. But I don't want tactical combat a la Total War either. There has to be a way to improve combat so that it
a) Isn't boring as in Civ IV
b) Doesn't distract the strategy element
c) Works
Perhaps the army system should be reintroduced. Attackers could decide which army to face, so the stack of doom would no longer be possible (a single army can only fit so many troops). Also perhaps a direct penalty for large stacks would help. I find it rather boring to just snowball over the enemy, city by city, with an army composed of only three different unit types.
Kullervo
Mahler/Sibelius Freak
In response to the seige weapon proposition:
The scaling problem is understood, but there has to be some disparity between catapult shots and artillery shots. Obviously one cannot conserve all of the realism (For example, I doubt that it takes 200 years to cross Europe on Roman roads, but that's what the game makes it), but if a scale can be achieved between the siege weapons, why not? Possibly, catapults wouldn't be able to fire at hills or forests at all, and only to directly adjacent squares... etc.
And by the way, the Japanese cruiser 'Yamato' could fire so far that it needed special planes to direct it's shots, as they could not be seen from the cruiser itself. I assume that means more than 25 kilometers of range, although I could be drastically wrong.
The scaling problem is understood, but there has to be some disparity between catapult shots and artillery shots. Obviously one cannot conserve all of the realism (For example, I doubt that it takes 200 years to cross Europe on Roman roads, but that's what the game makes it), but if a scale can be achieved between the siege weapons, why not? Possibly, catapults wouldn't be able to fire at hills or forests at all, and only to directly adjacent squares... etc.
And by the way, the Japanese cruiser 'Yamato' could fire so far that it needed special planes to direct it's shots, as they could not be seen from the cruiser itself. I assume that means more than 25 kilometers of range, although I could be drastically wrong.
First of all, about the horizon - depending on the cruiser's observation tower's height (I estimate it at 40 meters above the sea level), its vision range would be about 23 kilometers. But back to the topic.
Catapults and trebuchets weren't long range weapons by modern standards in real life. It would be absurd to have them be able to attack without risking taking damage, as they had to be so close to their enemies that they were very vulnerable.
However, artillery is vastly different. They became widespread in WWI, and were fired not near the enemy, but from afar, behind the trenches with machinegunners defending them. That's why ranged bombardment should not be allowed for ancient units but for modern ones it would be appropriate. Artillery in LoR has a bombardment range of 1, by the way, and I think mobile artillery had the same too. 2 would be nearing ridiculously long distances. The legendary battleship Bismarck has a huge range (4 I think) but hey, legendary units are supposed to be very powerful.
Ranged bombardment shouldn't, however, be overly powerful, and in LoR it isn't. It misses very often, especially against already damaged units.
And about scale, there are some weird things going on. Like fighter planes. Seriously, they can perform missions spanning half the continent. And bombers have even greater range. Sure, there are real life strategical bombers that can fly extremely long distances, but for those first fighters... come on.
Catapults and trebuchets weren't long range weapons by modern standards in real life. It would be absurd to have them be able to attack without risking taking damage, as they had to be so close to their enemies that they were very vulnerable.
However, artillery is vastly different. They became widespread in WWI, and were fired not near the enemy, but from afar, behind the trenches with machinegunners defending them. That's why ranged bombardment should not be allowed for ancient units but for modern ones it would be appropriate. Artillery in LoR has a bombardment range of 1, by the way, and I think mobile artillery had the same too. 2 would be nearing ridiculously long distances. The legendary battleship Bismarck has a huge range (4 I think) but hey, legendary units are supposed to be very powerful.
Ranged bombardment shouldn't, however, be overly powerful, and in LoR it isn't. It misses very often, especially against already damaged units.
And about scale, there are some weird things going on. Like fighter planes. Seriously, they can perform missions spanning half the continent. And bombers have even greater range. Sure, there are real life strategical bombers that can fly extremely long distances, but for those first fighters... come on.
Naokaukodem
Millenary King
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2003
- Messages
- 3,952
Yummi, i like this idea! Would be hard to balance though, but would add the missing spice Civ4 lacks nowadays.
Just play LoR, it's already in there. They're not inbalanced, they're like wonder units for warmongers. Each legendary unit starts with 3 promos and is very good compared to other units of its era. Often they have boni against certain units or unit types. Most legendary units are ground units, but there are two ships (Barbary Corsair and the aforementioned Bismarck) and one air unit (Red Baron) as well.
A feature I've always wanted, since Civ II, just for flavor...
You can zoom in to city street level. You can see all those people who live there walking around, doing their daily business. A mother taking her child to the school, traders in the markets, public speakers and heralds, firemen trying to rescue a cat from a high tree
And then you could click on any one - the mother, her children, the firemen, a police officer, even the cat... And the secret service/police/whoever appear from everywhere and surround this target, pointing their guns or crossbows or whatever weapons at them. And you can either have the target shot/beheaded/choked at the site or dragged away to be interrogated, incarcerated and impaled. I really am that evil
You can zoom in to city street level. You can see all those people who live there walking around, doing their daily business. A mother taking her child to the school, traders in the markets, public speakers and heralds, firemen trying to rescue a cat from a high tree
And then you could click on any one - the mother, her children, the firemen, a police officer, even the cat... And the secret service/police/whoever appear from everywhere and surround this target, pointing their guns or crossbows or whatever weapons at them. And you can either have the target shot/beheaded/choked at the site or dragged away to be interrogated, incarcerated and impaled. I really am that evil
Giving the player the feeling of being an actual evil dictator, perhaps? Those people are ingrateful, after all - always feeling that they live in a too crowded city, feeling that their leader is a villain and so on. I also feel that people (real life people) need outlets for their anger other than real world violence. However, perhaps it's best if Civ stays family friendly to a healthy extent - however, the holocaust, slave trade, apartheid and such have been so important "features" of real world history that perhaps adding such actions in Civ, although violent and controversial, would be good for the overall feeling and the historic accuracy. They are somewhat different to dragging innocent people to be interrogated, though (although at least holocaust has many similarities).
MrPopov
King
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2006
- Messages
- 985
Civ 5 needs more robust MP system. Implement a true server/client negotiation between connecting players to eliminate OOS (out of sync) issues. In this environment, you can't go out of sync, since only one matching (the server) is actually running the game, everyone else (clients) are just connecting to "watch" and "request moves" to the server. This may not prevent cheating if the person hosting the server is not trustworthy, but I'm sure the community can come up with a solution.
In case everyone didn't know already...
http://www.civilization5.com/
CIV V is coming out next fall!
http://www.civilization5.com/
CIV V is coming out next fall!
Wodan
Deity
Yep, I saw it already. The hex-base, if nothing else, is a good move.
killmeplease
Mk Z on Steam
i like hexes too