Where did the Fun go?

[JosEPh_II]

Maybe I'm just getting burned out after 3+ years of RoM and then the Modmod AND. But playing the latest version of AND I have more objections and complaints about the modmods direction than I ever imagined I would. Heck! I have Every version of AND that Afforess has put out!

So is it just me? Or do others feel the way I do? That the Modmod is losing an intangible in the name of realism and logic. And that intangible is "wanting" to play another turn even though it's late and I have work tomorrow. Where did the Fun go?

With this latest version and it's set of patches I find myself playing for an hour and thinking "do I want to start over"? Is it worth it to continue this game? I can win but it's beginning to feel like Micromanagement Hell! And I'm a Dyed in the wool Micromanager!!!

Why is it so much of a pain to keep the citizens happy and healthy so I can concentrate on build that mega army to go a conquering? Or build a cities culture up to a point that the AI's weaker city next door does a Culture flip to me?

I gave up a long time ago on a Cultural victory with AND. And I don't think I've had a city flip from culture in over a year of AND play. I can still do it with RoM2.92, so why can't I with AND?

I'm disheartened that my favorite Modmod has become unfun.

I'm sorry Afforess, you do great things with the Modmod. But IMHO this time the fun got left out.

JosEPh

 

[Afforess]

So is it just me? Or do others feel the way I do? That the Modmod is losing an intangible in the name of realism and logic. And that intangible is "wanting" to play another turn even though it's late and I have work tomorrow. Where did the Fun go?

What's scarier, that I agree, or that Joseph II's right?

What Joseph is noticing here is the total lack of vision on my part. Where does AND end? Which features will I reject? How exactly do I want to improve RoM? Honestly, I have no idea. That's the real problem; everything else is just a symptom. I've actually been pondering this a while while I was on vacation.

To figure out the solution we need to reflect on what worked well and what was fun. I think the real golden era of RoM was 2.71. It was before the issues in 2.8 with Zappara attempting to balance stuff. RoM 2.71 had a few flaws, but overall, it was an excellent core-game. In fact, when I play MP with a lot of people, I use 2.71, because it's stable in MP, and still a lot of fun.

Now, about that time, AND 1.55 came out, the second most popular version of AND to date (1.73 is the most popular). It had some bugs. I remember that you could ALWAYS found on peaks, regardless of distance from other cities after researching Algebra. The installer is still on Sourceforge even.

Now, what did AND 1.55 do that AND 1.74 doesn't? Well, AND 1.55 turn times were better. But while that's a problem, it's not the killer of fun. RoM 2.71's turn times were the infamous 6 minute turns. The key is to ask what DIDN'T AND 1.55 do that AND 1.74 does?

Simplicity.

There is nothing wrong with a lot of the new features that AND adds. Look at Personalized Maps. They offer very little additional thinking overhead, while making the game look like a real world. Advanced Automations curbs the amount of thinking you need to do with unit movements, which is great. New Game Concepts like these are great. New Building Chains like the Sports stuff, not-so-much.

To get an idea of what simplicity should look like, at least with units, take this ideal unit chain, here:

Spoiler :

It's relatively straight and easy to figure out. There aren't too many units, and they come at even, and relatively well-spaced intervals.

Now, let's scroll up a bit...

Spoiler :

Total chaos. There are units that dead-end, that start in the middle, that have 4 different upgrades, and that are all over the place. The promotion tree is just as bad. My mom, a Noble-Level Player, nearly always picks the Combat I, II, III promotions, because it's simply too confusing to work out what you need. The graph's a total mess, and a bunch of promotions are totally useless in 99% of situations. Buildings too suffer from the same problem.

I'm toying with the idea of making AND 1.75 a stand-alone mod, and cleaning out a lot of the feature creep that AND and RoM are both suffering from.

 

[climat]

RoM/AND have too many buildings, units, techs, resources and so on. Lack of simplicity is a kind of natural result. Time to clean?

 

[Fanghorn]

Im a diversity lover. Lots of features make me happy because i can start over and over again without getting into the same situation twice (ideally). And even allthough im a big opportunist of Simplicity (the kind mostly seen in games like spore ) i have to admit that AND might need some streamlining. But thats not because there is too many. Its rather because many of the feathers seem to be nice but dont fit in so much. They should at least be balanced out on each other. And yes, some of the unit upgrades dont even make much sense.

Simplicity will most probably enhance MP though .

 

[DRJ]

Yeah, I don't agree about the simplicity either. The more well-adjusted content there is (relative to acceptable turn-times) the better. I also like all the different promotion/upgrade possibilities. After all, if you go for simplicity, Afforess, you walk the path of Civ-Revolutions, which aims to be understandable for console-kiddies, IMHO but doesn't satisfy the needs of longtime strategy freaks. Actually, the path AND took with the upgrade chains made me suspicious in the first place although I got accustomed to it (I liked many of the features that have been suspended by newer AND versions).

So, somehow the "fading fun" was felt in me, too. Nevertheless mostly because either the game is too hard in the beginning too easy once you made a "secure" frontline (AI can't wage good war, they are just stupid, even 10 times the size of an army can't really do any harm, except in the beginning), or be it because of bugs like the tiles that still have culture of dead civs and can't be claimed deep inside my territory...

But actually, getting used to new versions is part of the experience and sometimes the things you miss seem to be more grave than the improvements (turntime/bugfixes/upgrade chains etc) - but in the long run you fall in love with the new versions; just don't make so that they get too simple...

 

[Justin Cray]

To me the fun in AND lays in finding overpowered combos and winning the game, and the latter versions fixed a lot of... unbalanced solutions.

I remember back in the day always gunning for the Pyramids, or how broken Horses were with Hydro's animal trainers, or the insane free Promotions we had for a short time.

The problem I see is that the fun got "patched out" and that the new inclusions are pre-balanced so to say.

But I wont complain, I'm still playing daily.

 

[Tomcat1962]

I'm not sure that Simplicity is the key.

Let me first express that in the following i only can rate AND 1.73, 'cause this is the version i'm still playing 'cause i really like finally to end a full game with that version beside of it's possible flaws. Also, I only rate strictly from a Single-Player Point of view.

Imho, there a other reasons for "the problem" that some feel that the spirit of fun has gone.

Beside the fact that personally my fun-rating of AND has grown to a very high level (don't know if there's are major steps backwards in 1.74) because of genius feature like Personalized maps, Advanced City Radius, uneven cultural spreading and others, i often feel confused about 2 things:

1. Buildings
2. Promotions

1. My Feeling is, that there are too many. There's a whole bunch of buildings i never make use of 'cause the disadvantages in my personal view and style of playing don't justify to build them (For example the Treadmill Crane or Gambling Hall Shanty Town). As Human player, i can live with this, 'cause it's only a matter to make a decision. I learned to ignore these buildings. But my feeling is, that the AI is to confused with all the possible buildings.(Remark: I always play with "Ruthless AI" on.)

2. I agree with Afforess that "a bunch of promotions are totally useless in 99% of situations". For example "Cover", "Charge", "Pinch", etc.. I also focus on the Combat I, II, II, etc. Promotions as core-promotions, combined with those that give crucial special abilities like Amphibious, Blitz, Commando, etc. It's frustrating and a pity, that such a great feature like Instant promotions becomes often useless because the Promotion that is picked is taken from a inconsistent list of promotions.
(In addition, this great new feature "Instant Promotion" would get another boost to cause a lot of more fun if it would be combined with renaming the victorious unit with unique names and also with placing landmarks after such glorious fights like someone in this forum allready suggested. I know, that there are random events that reward you with that unit naming, but for my taste, these random events are to rarely.

On the upgrade path for Units, in contradiction i disagree with Afforess. The only thing here i don't like are units with a dead-end path. Diversification (e.g. units with different upgrade paths), Concentration (e.g. different units focus on a single upgrade path) or "jumping" isn't a problem to me that causes any harm. Neither is, that some units start "in the middle" even if i'm a fan of experience and promotions representing "military tradition". Maybe it's also (only?) a code problem which cause this chaotic overview?

Conclusion: Tweaking, not simplification!

Keep it simple, where it should be simple, but don't clean out to much. Units, Building & Promotions should be more unique. The Advantages (or disadvantages) should be more clear.

 

[vincentz]

I agree with the promotions are F.....

Many of them could be fixed very "easely" IMO

If f.ex the promotion against gunpowder would give a Defend first against gunpowder at level I and Attack first at level II. Suddenly these promotions would become interesting (again IMHO).

 

[Fanghorn]

If we talk about promotions. I dont like those Religious promotions. They are kinda hard to get and many of them are not very special or just weak. Diversity again might be the key here. Every Promotion chain should have a unique feature at least.

 

[generalstaff]

Well, I started a game, and it may be the Eternity gamespeed talking, but I kind of feel the same way as well. I am also glad that some of the high profile users (OK, Jospeh) had the courage to say the same thing as well.

I am just speculating, but maybe there are number of issues causing this feeling.
1. No up-to-date added civilization pack: Sure, the 2.8 Mega civ pack technically works (with graphic issues though), my Leaderhead Pack is still fine after all these months (no added civs though), and CoC has many issues as well, but is still playable. Maybe being able to play as the Canadian Civilization, or try taking over the world as Pol Pot might be able to shake off the blues.

2. Novelty is missing: Back with AND 1.55 and RoM 2.71, aka the Golden Age as Afforess brilliantly said, Afforess, vincentz, and all the other modders. finished adding many missing things from RoM, and it was new and exciting to be able to play balanced games. However now, many new features are very cool, but either changed existing buildings (we already are familiar with the Castle mod buildings) or led to increased micro. Since us modders filled these missing holes in Promos and Buildings, there has not been room for exciting new content, especially since we may have gotten in the mindset of running down the clock due to the impending release of Civ5.

3. There isn't always room for more: During the Golden Era, us modders
finished some of our projects and started taking requests, this led to added features, which some users liked, but others found as clutter (example being the Sports Mod, with 1/3 of the content being missing things, and the other 2/3 being overly detailed buildings and techs). This is the cause of the over complexity of the upgrade trees, however, Afforess has helped solve this problem by making many of these features not standard or by leaving them to Hydromancer's HAND.

4. We are all probably a little burned out: It's true, think about how long some of use have played RoM, especially with thinking about how to improve Civ5 before it is even released.

5. No ending in sight (except for Civ5): Yes I already harped on how the release of Civ5 is what is going to help end, and therefore stabilize RoM and AND, so I will stop there about it. I do agree as modders, we may have seen the conclusion of some of our projects (i.e. with my stuff, Civics Buildings finished itself due to the limited number of civics and only recently changed due to new XML tags, Modular Wonders only changes when new building art is available), but as a whole, it is difficult to see the end of AND due to the many mini-mods out there, and what should be included and what should be considered supplemental. What should be the ending vision of RoM and AND? I do not know, maybe we do not want to see this mod come to a conclusion...

6. The Revolution starts...never: Back in the Golden Age, Revolutions were fun and challenging, now they seem nerfed. That is a common complaint since we play well enough to avoid it, but we only see it happen to the AI when we already have them under our bootheal; yet, we do not want the AI to be crippled by Revolutions, the problem is that we want it both ways. Maybe the issue is that this feature lost its novelty, but I blame 2.8.

 

[WildFire]

7. Multiplayer: Perhaps the most unstable version in a long while

 

[Psyringe]

As someone who's just started his first game of AND, I'd like to say that I absolutely love the abundance of new content that RoM/AND has to offer. It's certainly a bit overwhelming, but I love to be overwhelmed.

I don't miss any sense of focus in the mod because I frankly didn't regard RoM/AND as a focused mod anyway, and that was exactly why I wanted to play it. It's an integrative mod with lots of new content that still plays like Civ.

Some tweaking and balancing is probably warranted - the promotion does indeed look rather messy, and I'm not sure about the buildings that keep replacing each other (they confuse me a bit, and I keep building things and finding out that they get replaced shortly after). But I don't see any indication for removing content, so far. Of course, I haven't even played a whole game yet. But since generalstaff already contemplated the possibility of players being jaded and/or ehausted, I thought I'd throw in the perspective of an AND newbie who's right now totally thrilled by the huge amount of new content.

Throwing RoM and AND together, as contemplated by Afforess, would probably make things easier, but I think that now's a rather bad moment for long-term plans. Civ5 is just around the corner. Some players/modders might totally switch to Civ5 and never look back, other might be disappointed by Civ5 and all the more motivated to throw themselves into Civ4 modding. Right now, it's impossible to tell how things will turn out.

 

[Iceciro]

If you can keep modding despite the impending Civ5 to do it? I support making it a solo mod, not heaped on top of RoM... because then you're reliant on things other people have crammed into your foundation - a great example of this is the HN Warlords, which was pretty universally reviled, and it wasn't even an AND change. Fall Further went this route too and was better for it.

The building penalties are too harsh to be fun. As I stated, if I want to put every building down in a city I've paid for that by the city being unable to produce anything.

And despite the current versions being touted as "more balanced" they don't come close to the feeling I had when I picked up AND and the AI actually BEAT ME. On Prince. Something no mod had accomplished if I had a small grasp of what was going on. The lethargic AI and buggy multiplayer mean that no matter how sexy the features are, I lack intelligent opponents to use them with!

 

[cha dawn]

My experience with the latest versions of ROM/AND.

I liked the detailed way to play civ,but the complaints were :

-too long waiting times
-the revolution mod has changed, less revolutions in the last versions and im opinion revolutions made it very exciting to play.
-starting with the industrial area too much techs, I never come to play with the ANM.

I play now ROM 2.4 (BTS 3.17) and in plays very nice( I changed cultural victory in 5 cities legendery culture).

I have to say i miss the nice additions : - ANM and max units per tile.

If you come with a final ROM/AND i would prefer a simpier tech tree like ROM 2.4 and the best additions of your mod.

 

[Snofru1]

The building penalties are too harsh to be fun.

That´s exactly why I lost a lot of fun in playing AND. IMO the main penalty for buildings should be the amount of hammers to finish it. Some decent penalties like health in coal plants are fine as long as they can be overcome quite easily. But why maintenance for buildings? It might be realistic, but it´s not fun. And don´t follow the path to research or gold/commerce penalties, please don´t. Make buildings expensive to build (hammers) but cheap to maintain.

Apart from that I really do like what Afforess, Killtech and others have done for this Mod, even recently, geniuses at work...

 

[Iceciro]

Tbh, the cost of buildings in Civ V is raw gold, rather than a percent of maintenance. I could accept that, as opposed to progressively scaling maint. It makes sense, particularly for say, universities. I could take universities costing 1-2 gold per turn because they're state funded. And it prevents you from running the Science slider at supermax.

On features:

You need a roadmap. You NEED a roadmap. Not just "I like this idea of having sports matter" but how does it matter, and more importantly, how does it improve gameplay? If it doesn't improve gameplay, excise it or modularize it so that its not part of the core install but people can add it if they like it. Sports is a great example of this. I like the martial arts tech and buildings but pretty much nothing else.

Terrain damage is another - it makes me take the already mostly useless arctic and desert promos? Yay. IMHO, take the route Fall did with the Shock/Cover/Pinch/Ambush promotions - make them count more. It encourages unit specialization, wheras a combat focused unit is going to be an all-rounder. Of course, you'd actually have to teach the AI to take something other than the Combat tree, too... I also really like how Woodsman 3 and Guerilla 3 give something that makes the unit good even when they're not on the terrain - first strike chances, withdraw chances, etc. Do that for everything, make Shock IV give a flat combat bonus too, or something like that. That way I won't delete my Shock IV units when gunpowder comes around because they've got useless promos.

 

[wilson6907]

I still love ROM:AND.. I think 1.74 is the best yet, Civilization ROM:AND is seriously the only game I ever play. I use the computer mostly to learn and do work.. But this game is an exception I love the geography, and great concepts. Great Job Afforess your my hero lol.

 

[Maniac]

Newsflash: kitchen sink mods don't work!

 

[Afforess]

Newsflash: kitchen sink mods don't work!

Sure they do; I'd take that back before you get the whole forum attacking you.

If you read my post, I mentioned how earlier versions DID work. After all, what do you think Civ5 will be, but just a giant, souped up mod of Civ4? It has the same basic premise after all.

 

[fireclaw722]

Newsflash: kitchen sink mods don't work!

OHMIGOSH!!!! AHHHHAHHHHAHHH, can't belive that was said!
Although my computer(and me) agrees, very much so...