Will we ever see a civgame oriented toward epic singleplayer games again?

[troytheface]

SP is what they have worked with for what...15 years? MP was added on a few years ago. It is logical that they would work harder on MP and then tout their accomplishments. The SP AI was not to bad for me personally as i was able to play competitive civ3 games for many years-(til present if i would not have thrown out my disk) whereas the games CTP and RTW lasted a few months for me afor i could win everytime.
What I would have liked to see is tech advances making the game more fun - in other words what were formly "ages" became progessively less fun to play- which is interesting since u get new units and movement and arenas of combat- it was like new possiblities= less possibilities
I hope the AI is smarter at diplomacy and at stopping the "Giant Civ on another Continent that just gets Bigger and Wins". How hard is it to code
something to the effect that the "the largest has a few allies and everyone else hates them". ? Isn't that what eventually happens to large Civs? And if u are the large civ- how about a bit of real pressure in order to attain victory?
Maybe a tiny civ that has remained alive and aimed for subs and nukes on an isle with a militaristic leader should be able to win based on a few kills and the threat of more. Or a small neutral Civ has a killer airforce and paratroopers and expands crazily near the end.
The rewriting history aspect might be furthered by rewriting tactics- as well as over all strategy. (Battles throughout history - WW2 "what ifs" )
As a matter of fact - they should have at least one female working on the coding ect and also one person (not a beta person) that knows nothing about the game - that can see things clearly and may ask the obvious questions -that no one asks -to fill "plot holes".

 

[mag827]

"You need to think beyond your own framework."

I am offended by this comment. Anyway, we will see what the AI is made of in a month's time I don't see why I should continue with this argument.

 

[Raggamuffin]

You shouldn't be. I too need to do that from time to time. We all do. I was merely trying to lift your thoughts out of the mentioned issue to try to convince you otherwise.

I apologize if you thought I was trying to ridicule your opinion.

 

[warpstorm]

I really don't see how they could improve the solo game significantly if they put more effort on the MP. Multiplayer is all about network code

No, that's just the simpler tech part of MP. I'm sure they finished that part of the game ages ago. The hard part is balance, fun, and pacing. This part carries over to the single player experience.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

@Loppan.
Obviously we won't know how moddable Civ4 is, we do know that the majority of the game-including the AI code-will be exposed to python, and thus moddable. In fact, they boasted previously that you could effectively turn civ into a 'Fantasy RPG mod' if you wanted. If true, then I get the sense that diplomacy and espionage should be a 'doddle' (well, at least to people with some understanding of writing in computer language!)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Commander Bello]

I have to wonder a little bit.

We assume that the game is not yet finished, do we?
In turn this means, that the testers just cannot THAT much response, as some of the parameters constantly are changing.
Sure, they can give input about which features they like or dislike, and they can (and will) try to exploit weaknesses of the engine which in turn will make some settings more usable and more balanced.

Nevertheless, a big deal of the work will be to make the MP features more stable from a technical point of view.

Additionally, I agree that the setup of a successful MP game will significantly differ from the setup of a good SP game.
For a MP game you have to get all (human) players into action quite soon, as otherwise some of them might feel bored, cause they play MP to interact (even via electronic means) with other humans.
For a TBS for single player, I would assume this to be different, as in SP mode the player inherently knows that there is no interaction with other humans. So, there is more time to allow for a building phase which concentrates on that player, at least as far as the "epic" conception is regarded.

And I have to agree that most of the new features and changing of old features seems to be related to "give the player more action", meaning less concentration on the slow build-up process.
After all we know that the "epic" setting for SP seems to prolonge building times, research times and so on. Nothing is known that there would be different settings apart from that.

At the bottom line: to start the construction of such a game with the MP feature will make for better balancing in a limited range for features, which is not bad. It will (or should) significantly improve the technical MP features as well.
There may even be more ideas available for the developers to pick from.

Yet, I don't see that massive improvement in inherent game strategies, as all those new ideas (and the human reaction to those) first will have to be put in code, stabilized and then tested out. And quite a lot of features will turn out to contradict themselves, so this is quite an iterative process with not too quick progress.

I am pretty sure that Civ4 will be the much better MP game, compared with any other earlier attempts. Whether the SP experience will be that significantly improved, I doubt very much. Especially I doubt this for the fraction who likes the "huge-dimensioned" experience. This just seems to have been neglected.

 

[Robi D]

i'm not sure what exactly your getting at loppan, since sp and mp games are exactly the same except in mp your opponents are other humans and sp its ai opponents. So by making the mp aspect first is no big deal. Having player both sp and mp on civ3 im exited about civ4, because you could really play a long mp game in civ3 because who has 10-12 hrs just to play, but with the new pit boss system it lets you continue the game in between sessions, making long games more feasable.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Obviously we won't know how moddable Civ4 is, we do know that the majority of the game-including the AI code-will be exposed to python, and thus moddable. In fact, they boasted previously that you could effectively turn civ into a 'Fantasy RPG mod' if you wanted. If true, then I get the sense that diplomacy and espionage should be a 'doddle' (well, at least to people with some understanding of writing in computer language!)

Sounds good but with the new rpg-like emphasis on units a fantasy rpg mod doesn't seem to way off.... modding in a pope or an ability to give the player/AI semicontrol over a vassalstate would probably be much trickier. I know practically nothing about modding though, just to be clear.

I pretty much agree with everything you said Commander Bello except that if the focus had been on epic games you would have the time and possibility to stuff a lot of more features into the game and use them during the prolonged building fases.
Streamlining the game is good to reduce the boredom especially in long games but the space it leaves has to be filled with other content - more modern era politics instead of unit movement for example...

Edit: @Robi D: They are almost the same, true, but that doesn't mean that the SP game could have been much better if it was developed to be solely a SPgame. I want long, epic SP games and somewhat faster MP games. It's tough to combine these two, is all I'm saying....

 

[Commander Bello]

[...]
Streamlining the game is good to reduce the boredom especially in long games but the space it leaves has to be filled with other content - more modern era politics instead of unit movement for example...

To this I completely agree.

 

[Robi D]

@Robi D: They are almost the same, true, but that doesn't mean that the SP game could have been much better if it was developed to be solely a SPgame. I want long, epic SP games and somewhat faster MP games. It's tough to combine these two, is all I'm saying....

They already has a fast version in civ3, its the accelerated production options, the fast version of civ4 will be equal to that. The current civ3 is normal speed plus the epic version, so everyone has a choice what they would prefer, so one doesn't affect the other.

 

[warpstorm]

We assume that the game is not yet finished, do we?

In turn this means, that the testers just cannot THAT much response, as some of the parameters constantly are changing.

Sure, they can give input about which features they like or dislike, and they can (and will) try to exploit weaknesses of the engine which in turn will make some settings more usable and more balanced.

This does not follow from the first supposition that the game is not quite finished. I know that during previous betas, they only picked people who were willing to put in the time and dedication needed to test which paramerters were working or not.

Nevertheless, a big deal of the work will be to make the MP features more stable from a technical point of view.

I'm fairly scertain that since they said they've been playing MP games of Civ4 for over a year and a half that this has been solved long ago and is not where they are spending their efforts lately.

At the bottom line: to start the construction of such a game with the MP feature will make for better balancing in a limited range for features, which is not bad. It will (or should) significantly improve the technical MP features as well.
There may even be more ideas available for the developers to pick from.

It should and it may.

Yet, I don't see that massive improvement in inherent game strategies, as all those new ideas (and the human reaction to those) first will have to be put in code, stabilized and then tested out. And quite a lot of features will turn out to contradict themselves, so this is quite an iterative process with not too quick progress.

That's why they've been doing the MP testing for over a year. Because it does take a while and a lot of games. I assume that there are MP games of it going on right now, as ther have been every day for the past year and half or so.

I am pretty sure that Civ4 will be the much better MP game, compared with any other earlier attempts. Whether the SP experience will be that significantly improved, I doubt very much. Especially I doubt this for the fraction who likes the "huge-dimensioned" experience. This just seems to have been neglected.

But I have faith in Soren since he is an SP kinda guy, not an MP kinda guy in his preferences.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

They already has a fast version in civ3, its the accelerated production options, the fast version of civ4 will be equal to that. The current civ3 is normal speed plus the epic version, so everyone has a choice what they would prefer, so one doesn't affect the other.

Slowing down Doom3 to slowmotion will make the game longer but it might not be what the gamers want when they complain about the how short the game was. They would probably like to have the same pace but more content. That's the short version of what I see as a potential problem in civ4. More has been pointed out and explained in previous posts.