Speaker Wrote:You mean aside from their last 5 or so titles?
one = civ game. I've never played any of there other games
.Darrell
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Civilization 5 Announced
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Interesting video walkthrough. I like the look of the game, and the combat system appears better than what I was fearing (although it still seems that ranged units are going to dominate combat, and I'm really dubious about how the AI will perform). However:
- The city-states really bug me. So the whole game mechanic there is based around bribing them with gifts of gold? Really? That's your vaunted new diplomatic system?!? Umm, there had better be more to it than that, because the Civ4 modifier system was light-years ahead of this. - And on that related note, please tell me you can't *BUY* cities from the AI with gold. Right? Remember how that was a game-breaking exploit in Civ1 and Civ2??? - I am not down with the puppet states either. So my "reward" for capturing an enemy city is either a giant happiness penalty, or an inability to control the city's production. Umm, thanks but no thanks there.  The whole vassal/puppet idea is one that sounds like fun, until you realize how stupid the AI is at controlling city production. There was actually an early civic in Civ4 which granted huge production bonuses, but the AI determined what cities would build. We scrapped it because it was no fun for players. I think this is a gigantic mistake in game design.- The "conquer all capitals" victory mechanic is beyond stupid, but whatever, that's the way they've chosen to play this game. "Return spaceship parts to the capital" is similarly retarded. It's another repeat of the "wait for the spaceship to arrive" school of game design.  The revamp of the diplo victory also seems like a step backwards, away from population based voting and back to the Civ3 "one vote per civ" nonsense. Mixed with the city-state influence bribe-o-thon, I'm not optimistic about the UN. All of this is a shame, because I feel like there's a good game in the Civ5 design, but wow did they ever screw up some of the details. Just not feeling too good about this one, guys. Too much Civ: Colonization and Civ: Revolutions, not enough Civ4. Sullla Wrote:Too much Civ: Colonization and Civ: Revolutions, not enough Civ4. I totally agree with this sentiment! Colonization is really awful and I was so unimpressed with Rev that I didn't get it. Lets hope they don't make it 3 out of 3
"You want to take my city of Troll%ng? Go ahead and try."
Having worked through much of the available data (via Arioch, videos, previews), Civ 5's happiness seems to be far more important to the way games will play than is generally being reported. I think it may yet change the whole notion of expansion and empire.
In Civ 4, happiness capped the size of each city separately, so arguably encouraged early expansion. In Civ 5, happiness is an empire-wide total, to be split across all your cities: India's ability aside, every citizen of your empire creates (as far as I can determine) 1 unhappiness, plus ever city 2 unhappiness. Resources, buildings and policies (to name 3) first offset unhappiness, then create positive happiness (for Golden Ages and major population growth). That sounds straightforward until you realise the dominance of luxury resources in creating happiness. Based on the recent Gamespot video, 5 happiness per unique luxury resource. There are reported to be 15 different luxury resources on the map, but logically you'll struggle to settle more than a couple at the start. However, other city states (especially) will have those resources, making that side of the game significant. Social policies contribute - although 5 policies is the basis for a Cultural win, so I guess most game won't get that many, thus diluting the potential of the full range of policies. Note that there are also very strong happiness policies that have no relationship to number of cities or population. For example, Patronage's Cultural Diplomacy - happiness from gifted luxury resources increased by 50%. Known buildings add precious little happiness, and almost nothing after the first city. For example, Circus and Theatre give empire-wide happiness benefits (which in this case implies a one-off addition to the happiness total, that cannot be repeated in subsequent cities). Wonders are similarly once-only (only a few Wonders give happiness). Subsequent cities are likely to be drains on happiness, not contributors, unless they specifically open up new luxury resources: A Colosseum (the only "build everywhere" happiness building I could find) only offset the "happiness cost" of a new city up to city size 2 (4 happiness from building, -2 for city, -1 per population). I'm making plenty of assumptions, some of which will be proved wrong. But the notion of having a Civ 4 continent full of 20+ population cities can't logically happen because there is enough happiness available to sustain it. Unless I'm missing a lot of options, total happiness will typically cap between 100 and 150. Probably half of that luxury resources. While it is tempting to conclude that Civ 5 has been designed with a "1 city challenge" in mind, I prefer to conclude that there is simply less emphasis on conquering land, and far more on controlling people. We see that logic all the way through - from the fact that cities (typically) have access to far more tiles than population to work them, through City States and Puppets, to Domination no longer requiring geographic domination. That's an interesting counter-point to the apparent dominance of war in Civ 5. The implication is that wars will be more targetted, with less emphasis on annexing cities. It probably does place rather more emphasis on the AI than in previous Civ versions, but Firaxis also seem confident in the ability of that AI to play like a human. Only time will tell. Worth noting on multiplayer that somewhat unbalanced Civ 4 features, like technology trading and spies, have gone, so they have some flexibility to break it again  .(...Returns to lurking...)
This discussion brings to mind the advent of RISC based processors, the purpose of reducing the instruction set having nothing to do with making a more powerful core, and everything to do with making it easier to create a competent compiler. Maybe they "streamlined" the game to make it possible to create a competent AI? Nah
.Darrell
I figure that if we wanted to create an RB mod from the off we could probably make the game work for us...but other than that? Not all that interested in the game, seems even worse than civ 3 whenever I think about it.
darrelljs Wrote:Wow, I missed that somehow. Be curious to see how Arathorn reacts I think you mean Sirian, who always crusaded to reduce and remove tech trading at every opportunity. He wanted it out of Civ 4 completely, and got a compromise where the AIs limit it via the "WFYABTA" mechanic. I don't recall Arathorn complaining much about it either way. Sullla Wrote:The "conquer all capitals" victory mechanic is beyond stupid It is? It seems reasonable to me as a way to demonstrate military superiority without the mop-up phase. As long as there's no gamey loopholes like moving your palace to avoid it (which the AI probably won't do anyway) or cheap ways to capture a single city like Civ 3's propaganda or Civ 4's nukes. Certainly no less stupid than creeping your way to 62% world land area when victory has already become inevitable around 40%.
Just for comparison, I went mining back to 2005...
Quote:Kylearan hit the nail on the head. This just isn't the kind of forum where people will endlessly discuss a game that hasn't been released yet and no one has had the chance to play. T-hawk Wrote:I think you mean Sirian, who always crusaded to reduce and remove tech trading at every opportunity. He wanted it out of Civ 4 completely, and got a compromise where the AIs limit it via the "WFYABTA" mechanic. I don't recall Arathorn complaining much about it either way. Not Sirian, but maybe not Arathorn. Someone loved the civ 3 tech trading mechanics, and hated the new system. Darrell |
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