Sullla Wrote:Civ3 Conquests was much better, as it actually added real content (even if that content was terribly unbalanced!)
Unbalanced due to "additional-type specialists" ?
Or due to bombarding-units ?
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Civilization 5 Announced
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Ioan76 Wrote:Unbalanced due to "additional-type specialists" ? I remember reading that Sullla had a right beef over the additional happiness resources added in for Conquests (it went from 8 to 11) as it unbalanced the mechanics for unhappiness in the game. I'm sure there's lots more than that, but it's all I can remember.
Well as long as we're resurrecting old rants about the Civ3 expansions...
 I still say that Conquests was a better expansion than Play the World though. PTW never should have existed in the first place; there should have just been one expansion for Civ3. If you clearly don't have enough content to justify an expansion, don't create one. Krill Wrote:Perhaps I'm a bit weird, but I'd rather have no content than unbalanced content. Or at least the option between the two. Particularly with MP games, you're often handcuffed by new content. If you hate the changes new DLC or a new expansion make, too bad: if you don't have it you can't play online. Jowy Wrote:How did Civ5 do commercially? Poking around it looks like it has sold mid-six figures of copies. Far cry from Civ IV's three million+ copies, but I'm not sure where Civ IV was at this time after its release, how much the games cost to make and market in adjusted dollars, average sale price, etc. I'm willing to bet that Civ V has made a tidy if not spectacular profit. Quote:As long as it wasn't a flop in that regard, we'll get another Civ at some point and there's a chance it won't be as horrible as Civ5 was. Agree on the first part, as long as a series has a pulse they'll keep making it. Not so sure on the second. At least anecdotally, I get the impression that while long time Civ fans hated Civ 5, casual gamers like it. It still ranks pretty highly on Steam's "most played" lists (currently at #6 in peak players). Now, make the assumption that the heads at Firaxis and 2K aren't high functioning mentally retarded folk who got their jobs when the board of directors mistook their slack jawed silence for thoughtfulness (a big leap, I know). These smart people, then, look at the following facts: - The game reviewed very well and remained very popular amongst casual players, who appreciated the relative simplicity and flashiness. - The "old guard", who probably only account for a tiny fraction of the total sales, hated the game to the point that the online community immediately started falling apart. - Early balance patching was a strange mix of trying to fix problems the old guard pointed out and trying to prove them wrong. Predictably, they just got more embittered and less interested. So: you have a large group of people who liked the game you released and didn't seem bothered one way or another at your attempts to improve it, and a smaller group of people who hated the game and only got even more pissed when you tried to fix it, and who probably won't buy the next game on principle. Who do you design Civ 6 for? I hope I'm being a pessimist when I say that the type of people who frequent this forum are no longer the target audience for Civ, but I think I'm being a realist. The good news is that Firaxis/Civ don't have a patent on historical 4X games, and it's only a matter of time before some other developer (Stardock?) makes the game Civ 5 should have been and continues in that vein.
I played a couple Civ5 games after the patch came out. Mavin's ideas (Sullla linked it on his website) allow you to win on a decent sized map on anything other than Diety. (There is another thread he made about how not to get DoW.) On small maps there are sometimes not enough RA partner's to keep your tech rate up at a decent rate. However you can just pick a strong rusher like Rome and kill everyone before they can get a big tech lead. AI's Diety bonus are so high that I won't play on that level.
The reason that there is such a big gap with Inmortal and Emperor is simple. On Emperor the AI bonus is high but not high enough to brake the game. Firaxis had no choice but to program the AI to build too many units due to its weakness. The extra units kill the AI giving you a huge edge after turn 100. They never build to many units to kill. Inmortal+Diety can build the extra units and keep on going.
Civ5 always ranks very highly on Steam's most played list because the game is Steam-exclusive. You must have Steam installed in order to play it. That skews the numbers heavily in favor of games like Civ5 (or Shogun Total War, also Steam-exlusive) as opposed to games where Steam is merely optional, and only a small portion of the player base will be included in the rankings. Furthermore, since we have no comparable numbers for Civ4, it's really impossible to say whether Civ5 is more or less popular. All we can say for sure is that Civ5 sold a lot of copies on release, and sales have slowed down greatly since then. I would estimate that the game has probably sold about a million copies total at this point, based on VGChartz numbers of traditional retailers and Steam "digital revenue" figures posted at the end of 2010.
But I'm not as pessimistic as chaunceymo. I don't believe that peope who want complex, deep, and engrossing strategy games make up a tiny niche market. All of those Civ4 sales had to come from somewhere, right? Look at the past history of the great 4X strategy games: Civilzation, Master of Orion, Master of Magic, Alpha Centauri, Galactic Civ, etc. etc. There's long been a market for these games, and that market still exists today. The problem comes when corporate executives think that they will get more sales by "casualizing" their product, thereby destroying what attracted attention to their product in the first place. Strategy games are inherently complex, and that's what their audience enjoys about them; trying to streamline them ends up making no one happy. (See Civ Revolutions, which sold roughly 25% of what Civ4 did, at a comparable development cost.) You end up making a product that pleases no one, and will be quickly forgotten. I think there will continue to be a market for strategy games like the Civ series, although I agree that Firaxis/2K probably won't be providing it. Publishers need to learn that not every game is going to sell like Call of Duty, and it's OK for every game not to sell like that either. There's no reason why a strategy game needs a $25 million budget for voiceovers, animated leaders, and graphics. (Look at Civ5: the leaders and their voiceovers become tiring extremely quickly, and the nice-looking graphics caused massive crashes/slowdown on large maps.) Middle market games are going to be the future of this genre, and publishers will (eventually) catch on to that. Understand what market you're going for, don't overspend on useless frivolities, and there will be room for games we enjoy playing along with very healthy profit margins. Stardock is the prime example of this... only they f'ed up very badly with Elemental. If they had waited to release their game for another year, we'd probably all be playing Elemental now and would be very happy. Sullla Wrote:I think there will continue to be a market for strategy games like the Civ series, although I agree that Firaxis/2K probably won't be providing it. Publishers need to learn that not every game is going to sell like Call of Duty, and it's OK for every game not to sell like that either. There's no reason why a strategy game needs a $25 million budget for voiceovers, animated leaders, and graphics. (Look at Civ5: the leaders and their voiceovers become tiring extremely quickly, and the nice-looking graphics caused massive crashes/slowdown on large maps.) I think you're right in the long term but the current trend for hot IP properties is to: A) Spent a ton of money on the game assets. B) The assets are supported by a mediocre gameplay experience because you're trying to market to the largest market possible. C) Pump a huge amount of ad money to hype it. D) Get record breaking first day sales so you have enough capital to immediately repeat the cycle. Spend a lot of money to immediately make a lot of money so you can spend even more money to make even more money... ... but eventually the IP becomes worthless so you retire it for a few years and go repeat with something else. This system works well for the publishers right now but its not sustainable. I suppose that's just how capitalism works with publicly traded companies just like how people do slash and burn agriculture in places that don't support it very well.
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." “I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.” antisocialmunky Wrote:I think you're right in the long term but the current trend for hot IP properties is to: What your describing is also the strategy for the film industry. I don't think there is anyone serious out there who will try and make out that the film industry is a beacon of either innovation or market growth. Brian Shanahan Wrote:What your describing is also the strategy for the film industry. I don't think there is anyone serious out there who will try and make out that the film industry is a beacon of either innovation or market growth. What, you didn't enjoy the innovative new films last year? Like Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter 7, Shrek 4, Twilight 3, and Iron Man 2?
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