Would you want to know more about Leoreth?

[Leoreth]

Actually I don't know anything about it because I don't really care, although the "you can have cities span multiple tiles now" sounds like pointless marketable feature creep that moves the game further into the wrong direction in terms of the sense of scale that Civ5 started to go down.

 

[Pavel Chichikov]

Yeah, it sounds as much. Are you open to adding any more respawns, Saudi Arabia, the Modern Greece modmod, Mohammad Ali's Egypt (Ottoman's often become a runaway superpower), Phoenicia as Israel, ect.

Have you changed your mind about Merkel's immigration policy yet?

 

[Leoreth]

Are you open to adding any more respawns, Saudi Arabia, the Modern Greece modmod, Mohammad Ali's Egypt (Ottoman's often become a runaway superpower), Phoenicia as Israel, ect.

Yes, although the meaning of what a respawn is will probably change at some point when the mechanics become more flexible.

Have you changed your mind about Merkel's immigration policy yet?

Nice leading question, but the answer is no. The most important thing that changed is that I'm tired of discussing this annoying topic.

 

[Leoreth]

Hey for the people who noticed my lack of activity in the last couple of weeks, I have a lot of stuff going on right now, including moving into a new apartment. So it's going to be a slow trickle at most, I'll try to stay on top of things in terms of bug reports but work on the hrtechs stuff is basically on hold, sorry. I hope people are off enjoying Civ6 right now anyway.

 

[ezzlar]

Hope you enjoy your new apartment, moving to a new place could really change your everyday living experience

I think many of us others have been occupied with Civ 6. Have you had the chance to play it as well, any opinions?

 

[Leoreth]

Moving went over rather smoothly, I'm slowly settling in right now. Work is also busy plus Christmas stuff, so I don't really have much time to get to where I want with it. Even less so for modding DoC.

I'm glad that my inactivity coincides with Civ6 so people have something else to play and DoC doesn't have to compete with it. But I haven't played it myself.

 

[Pavel Chichikov]

Have you gotten tired of people recommending you Civ 5 and now possibly 6?
A bunch of people have asked if I've played 6 yet, claiming it's 'so much better' but I really, really doubt it.

Would you consider working on improving the Sword of Islam, expanding it to Greece/Libya perhaps?

Do you play AoE2, Starcraft or any old RTS's?

Happy about Trump?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Would you consider working on improving the Sword of Islam, expanding it to Greece/Libya perhaps?

You are the last person I expected to become an Islamist.

Also go buy Civ5. Right now it's ridiculously cheap and the Vox Populi mod alone is worth getting it imo.

 

[Leoreth]

Have you gotten tired of people recommending you Civ 5 and now possibly 6?
A bunch of people have asked if I've played 6 yet, claiming it's 'so much better' but I really, really doubt it.

I don't think people have ever recommended it to me, only asked if I've played and what I think about them.

Civ5 is objectively bad and I don't buy into the idea that its expansions fixed it. Too many of its flaws are inherent to its game design. The expansions mostly seemed to fix elements that never should have been in the game in the first place ("we want AI to feel mysterious") but are not really the root of its problems, and add in even more vapid Facebook game like "one more turn" busywork.

Not really interested in Civ6 either, I find the art style underwhelming (same for Civ5 btw) and nothing about what I heard excites me either. I'm unsatisfied with the boilerplate 4X formula as it stands right now in general, most games in the genre feel the same with only minor variations. The genre is really due for a revolutionary game that redefines its boundaries.

Would you consider working on improving the Sword of Islam, expanding it to Greece/Libya perhaps?

Actually I think it's just about perfect as it is, edead called it done at the right time. In particular, I don't think a westward expansion would add anything to the game.

Do you play AoE2, Starcraft or any old RTS's?

I don't play RTSs in general, I'm not good at the whole macro/micro multitasking thing they've got going on, so it's usually more stress than fun. I do watch a lot of competitive SC2 though.

Happy about Trump?

haha no

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Civ5 is objectively bad and I don't buy into the idea that its expansions fixed it.

What about mods though? Vox Populi adds some genuinely brilliant game mechanics, like village and town improvements receiving extra yields if a trade route and/or city connection passes through them.

 

[Leoreth]

Never looked into Civ5 mods. But like expansions, adding conceptually good things doesn't solve the inherent problems of the game in my opinion.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Never looked into Civ5 mods. But like expansions, adding conceptually good things doesn't solve the inherent problems of the game in my opinion.

They can be softened up a lot though, and Vox Populi imo did a very good job of it. Civilian units behave like in 4, that is infinitely stackable with anything that isn't an enemy unit. The AI is actually reasonably clever. While happiness is still global, the effects of unhappiness are a lot more forgiving and scale appropriately rather than an instant EVERYBODY STOP EATING AND WORKING IMMEDIATELY the second it reaches -1. Instead of just population and number of cities happiness depends on a multitude of factors, and is actually quite brilliant:

Every city has certain needs, like Literacy, Safety, religious unity etc. Most of these can be summed up as "If this city produces less of a yield per capita than the global average happiness goes down, if more than average it goes up". E.g. if you have a city with 20 population and it only produces 3 research per turn (oh and research is no longer this stupid population=research formula) while most other cities produce ten times as much research with half the population this city will have lots of Illiteracy unhappiness. It works like this for culture (Boredom) and money (Poverty) too. Crime vs Safety is especially interesting in that regard, because it takes the strength of the city as a yield. That is, cities have a certain combat strength depending on buildings like walls and castles and a garrisoned unit. If you put a Tank in a city it will have a higher combat strength than if it was garrisoned by a Warrior, which translates into less unhappiness from Crime, which means you actually have a reason to put a unit or Walls into your safe inland capital. I think this is ingenious because it means you actually get a direct happiness benefit from putting a modern unit rather than just your starting warrior in a city, one that scales 1:1 with the strength of the garrison unit, something which is miles ahead of 4's military police mechanic. In fact I'd argue Vox Populi's happiness mechanic is more rewarding than 4's even. You are always on the lookout for ways to reduce unhappiness from various factors, pillaged tiles, religious disunity (which again scales very nicely because 5's religion mechanic is in some regards lightyears ahead of 4's), poverty, crime, even war weariness made a comeback.

I honestly think Vox Populi is on the same level as the likes of History Rewritten or Realism Invictus.

What exactly are the inherent problems of Civ5 anyway? 1UPT and Global Happiness? The latter has been turned completely upside down and the former is a lot more tolerable. Other flaws, like arbitrary counter intuitive penalties to expansion, a braindead and vengeful AI*, and a horrid user interface have been done away with too. Vox Populi is something between Kmod, BUG and Realism Invictus. It fixes all the broken and slow code, cleans up the UI, removes bad features and adds a ton of new ones.

I'm so convinced of Vox Populi, I'd even be willing to gift you Civ5 Complete right now if you promise me you would try it out. By right now I mean right this day, because tomorrow I'll be gone for a few days and then the current Steam sale will have ended.

*I fondly remember one game where Genghis Khan of all people kept trying to bribe me to make peace with everyone I declared war on, even though he had zero stake in any of those conflicts.

 

[Leoreth]

That really sounds interesting, I may have a look at what they're doing. I guess you can save Civ5 if your mod is basically a whole conversion?

As for inherent flaws, yeah 1UPT first and foremost. Not that decision itself, but how its consequences snowball through every other aspect of that game's design and balance, such as relative production times. I'm really not down with that wargame like focus on combat the game has going on, and I wish there were 4X with more abstract approaches to combat to be honest. And it makes the world feel small; I dislike the trend of shrinking map sizes and sense of scope that seems to have carried on with Civ6.

And thanks for the offer, but I can't promise to play anything right now ... if I have time to play I'd rather play my own mod for playtesting, or continue the EU4 Holland game I started over the holidays. I'm sure it'll be easy to pick up Civ5 cheaply now that its sequel is out later, although even then I'd be hesitant to give Firaxis any money for it.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

And thanks for the offer, but I can't promise to play anything right now ... if I have time to play I'd rather play my own mod for playtesting, or continue the EU4 Holland game I started over the holidays.

Ah, quick, tell me whether or not I should buy EU4 or not before the sale ends! It seems like something that would interest me, but there's just so many DLCs, and they just keep coming, and when will this game ever be complete, and what is this Community Soundtrack DLC what kind of hypercapitalistic community is this that even modders demand money, and I once read somewhere that some game mechanic was quietly removed in a patch only to be reintroduced in a DLC later, is that true?

I'm sure it'll be easy to pick up Civ5 cheaply now that its sequel is out later, although even then I'd be hesitant to give Firaxis any money for it.

But it's sooooooooooooo cheap right now. Also the whole idea of voting with your dollar is bourgeois ideology. You're better off just buying the cheapest of everything and then donating any surplus money to the Communist Party some charity or whatever.

 

[AdrienIer]

Ah, quick, tell me whether or not I should buy EU4 or not before the sale ends! It seems like something that would interest me, but there's just so many DLCs, and they just keep coming, and when will this game ever be complete, and what is this Community Soundtrack DLC what kind of hypercapitalistic community is this that even modders demand money, and I once read somewhere that some game mechanic was quietly removed in a patch only to be reintroduced in a DLC later, is that true?

Paradox games are great ! The way they work is that they release an initial version of their game and then release DLCs all the time with a lot of new features. But there's a big free patch that's released with the DLC, so even without buying the DLCs you get patches constantly that add new things : EU4 without any DLC today is nothing like when it was first released. Same will be true with HoI4, which is already better than on release.

 

[Leoreth]

Ah, quick, tell me whether or not I should buy EU4 or not before the sale ends! It seems like something that would interest me, but there's just so many DLCs, and they just keep coming, and when will this game ever be complete, and what is this Community Soundtrack DLC what kind of hypercapitalistic community is this that even modders demand money, and I once read somewhere that some game mechanic was quietly removed in a patch only to be reintroduced in a DLC later, is that true?

Short answer: definitely buy it.

Longer answer: if you like strategy and history at all, there really isn't a reason not to play EU4. It's really great at representing historical phenomena in good game mechanics and on the other hand using actual historical phenomena to balance the game. There is no win state and you get to set your own goals, but there is always something to do, resulting from how you have to react to AI behaviour while still propagating your own goals. The game has gotten really good at punishing gamey exploits while still staying enjoyable. Especially diplomacy is the lynchpin of this game and already interesting in itself to fuel a great experience, without everything else built around it. And all the complexity is packaged in a reasonably accessible way.

I get why you're wary of their DLC model because there's just so much stuff, but Paradox really is fine in that regard. Part of the problem is that Steam lumps everything together as DLC. The proper expansion packs are usually worth it in my opinion, and the most important game mechanics introduced by them are usually made available to everyone through patches. I cannot really tell you which is a must buy because I honestly lost track of which does what, but I always wound up every single one of them. Soundtrack/art packages can be safely ignored. Actually now that you've reminded me of the sale I'll stock up on the three expansions I was missing right away. So if you can get a bundled complete edition of all expansions until whatever date they created that offer, buy it.

But it's sooooooooooooo cheap right now. Also the whole idea of voting with your dollar is bourgeois ideology. You're better off just buying the cheapest of everything and then donating any surplus money to the Communist Party some charity or whatever.

Giving to charity to soothe your conscience after overspending on sales sounds rather capitalistic to me actually If it's something I actually want, I'm fine paying for it. But I don't want to reward Firaxis for making a terrible game just to have a look at the great work a modder did. It's not really voting with my dollar, since Civ5 already was a huge financial success so it's not like it's going to change their strategy.

(Edited because the CFC language filter is apparently meant to protect even preschoolers)

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Well alright then, you have convinced me. As if I needed any more distractions from my real life obligations. Oy vey.

Giving to charity to soothe your conscience after overspending on sales sounds rather capitalistic to me actually

Who said anything about a conscience? That's a legit tactic I read somewhere from an anarchist I think. Get everything as cheap as you can, pirate and steal if you can, and spend the difference on building up a revolutionary organization.

 

[Leoreth]

Pretty sure that was "get everything you need", giving no money leaves even more to dedicate to your political pursuit of choice. Let me quickly add that we don't endorse piracy and theft on CFC.

 

[Mouthwash]

Short answer: definitely buy it.

Longer answer: if you like strategy and history at all, there really isn't a reason not to play EU4. It's really great at representing historical phenomena in good game mechanics and on the other hand using actual historical phenomena to balance the game. There is no win state and you get to set your own goals, but there is always something to do, resulting from how you have to react to AI behaviour while still propagating your own goals. The game has gotten really good at punishing gamey exploits while still staying enjoyable. Especially diplomacy is the lynchpin of this game and already interesting in itself to fuel a great experience, without everything else built around it. And all the complexity is packaged in a reasonably accessible way.

Are you kidding? My massive German empire which owns all of Europe shouldn't fall apart because I annexed Greece too fast. Hormuz can colonize all of southern Africa in less than 100 years, then conquer up the west coast until reaching Portugal just north of the Congo- but their provinces in Indonesia don't count as colonies because it is in Asia? Korea ALWAYS creates a huge ahistorical empire in Manchuria and Siberia. Brunei and other Indonesian kingdoms behave like twentieth century European nationstates and annex each other within 5-10 years of game start (late-game conquests are actually much harder due to the increase in fort strength- that's right, in the age of Napoleon). European conquest of the Aztecs and Incas never happens until the late sixteenth century at least. Tibet is a nonentity and its provinces end up Muslim, France or Spain usually own territory deep inside each other, England always takes Scotland before 1500 (creating Spain and Britain require the SAME level of admin tech so you can expect to see the latter form a few decades later) and worst of all mountains don't serve as any kind of barrier whatsoever.

I'm glad I got fed up and left before they released corruption. Games like Civ IV use simple mechanics to create amazing gameplay, while Paradox just adds more and more modifiers until it becomes completely unplayable for people who didn't follow it from release.

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention the broken development system, where one state minors can improve their lands as much as continent-straddling empires. Or that the building system could have been removed from the game completely.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Now you tell me, after I spent 60€ on it.