Interview with Alex Mantzaris about BTS

[sunrise089]

Sounds like more bad ideas. Buffing spies (to the degree of making them equal to research or culture) seems absurd. Great spy: is the normal unit someone non-functional? Sitting Bull is borderline offensive: would people put up for a "middle eastern" leader representing modern Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran? the Portugal leader sounds fine, but is an example of a person who is more representative of an important Civilization rather than a really well-know individual figure. The chance to the Cav units seems odd - won't it overpower rifling? And if the new unit is substantially weaker, but you still need military tradition, would anyone even build them?

The ship thing seems oddest - it sounds like they were going for making the ending less set-in-stone, but could it really work as a come from behind option? I think not - the spaceship simply comes too late. A faster ship would have to cost more, so the larger and more advanced power would still come out ahead. And if it did allow come from behind space wins, it would be even worse - can you imagine doing everything right and then loosing to an AI that got lucky and somehow built a faster ship?

[ThERat]

interesting for me is that at civfanatics, the fanboys seem to love all features, while here, more cautious remarks are being made.

I think more features could mean more problems as the AI won't really now how to handle it. But Alex said, the AI would know how to use paratrooper...so let's see.

I will just wait and see and let you guys test the game.

Personally, I find SoZ terrible. A wonder to double WW. So, on higher levels the AI will build it and when you fight them, you get punished with more WW...awesome really

[sunrise089]

interesting for me is that at civfanatics, the fanboys seem to love all features, while here, more cautious remarks are being made.

I am a bit worried that my comments sound too negative after I re-read them. I think it's actually a bit of a backlash to what works so well with the fanboy crowd - just heaping new features on the game that sound cool. I'm far too much of a cynic to believe that more = better always applies, and this new expansion doesn't exist in a vacuum - in fact far from it.

We have:

1) People who worked on CIV Vanilla being less happy with the attention to good gameplay while working on Warlords, and now not working on BTS at all.

2) A game franchise that is making tons and tons of $$$ that will not have the relatively small resources needed to devote to a few simple problems that could be fixed in a patch

3) People admitting BTS won't have the same attention to balancing and playtesting Vanilla had

4) A departure of key talent from the company

5) The past record of problematic Civ expansions

6) What I view as a half-hearted attitude on behalf of the developer to supporting gameplay enhancing features - I cite BetterAIs addition to Warlords but total lack of updates as an example of this

7) What I view as a stupid and over-the-top NDA process which I suspect has removed many people from active Civ activity that wouldn't have hurt future product development at all

Now starting from that situation, it would take a simple statement of a re-committment to enhancing and balancing the core gameplay mechanics to make me renounce everything and proclaim BTS as the best expansion ever, but instead all I see are more and more "cool features". So yes, I'm very skeptical.

PS - This isn't an attack AT ALL on those folks working for Firaxis, or who have done so in the past. If it's attacking anyone at all, its the few higher ups who are making the overarching decisions about how the game is to be developed, or more to the point marketed. I have no qualms with Blake's AI development (I use his mod) or with what I would presume to be Sirian's input/guidance. I'm sure the game will be bettor for the input of all the RB and Civfanatics folk involved in the game, but it will be better in spite of the overall direction. Until I see something from the developers that suggests creating good gameplay is still being given first priority, I will continue to fear that our very talented and dedicated Civ players associated with Firaxis aren't being able to have their input used to its fullest.

[scooter]

Personally, I find SoZ terrible.

I thought that too when I first saw it, as if we need more WW, and let's just pretend for a minute that WW actually matters for the AI, it gets such massive bonuses that it doesn't really matter

I personally will never buy another Civ game, whether it's a complete new version or an expansion, until a good solid patch is out. I waited on Civ4 until 1.52 came out, and I waited on Warlords until 2.08 came out, and I was really glad I did (Civ3 pre-patches was ugly), so once the first BTS patch is out and if the reviews are generally pretty good, I'll probably give in and pick it up. I'm not worried about the new features not being fun (how could spies not be fun), I'm just worried that 1, they won't be properly balanced, and 2, the AI won't know how to use these new things...

[Sullla]

We've been over this before folks, so let's try not to judge the game too much before it comes out, alright?

But agreed that a wonder that INCREASES war weariness is a truly terrible idea.

[scooter]

1) People who worked on CIV Vanilla being less happy with the attention to good gameplay while working on Warlords, and now not working on BTS at all.

Who? I'm not disagreeing/arguing with you but I honestly want to know who?

2) A game franchise that is making tons and tons of $$$ that will not have the relatively small resources needed to devote to a few simple problems that could be fixed in a patch

Are you referring to the lack of one last patch for Vanilla? Yeah that irritates the mess out of me too :mad:

3) People admitting BTS won't have the same attention to balancing and playtesting Vanilla had

Can't quite agree with you here, of course it's not going to go to the lengths Vanilla did, vanilla was a complete different game, expansions only need testing of the new features, which is an incredibly small fraction of the amount of stuff that needed testing in the original version...

5) The past record of problematic Civ expansions

Civ3's expansions were mediocre at very best (PTW was absolutely terrible, conquests wasn't too hot itself), but I don't see how Warlords was problematic. It wasn't great, I agree, but I see no valid argument to say that it is worse than vanilla...

I'll write more later, but that's just what comes to mind

[Swiss Pauli]

We've been over this before folks, so let's try not to judge the game too much before it comes out, alright?

But agreed that a wonder that INCREASES war weariness is a truly terrible idea.

I'd say it's probably a terrible idea, as it seems fairly easy to be unbalancing if not properly implemented. But if it's available early enough and obsoletes at a reasonable date, then maybe - just maybe - it'll help curb the game-winning impact of early human aggression.

[ThERat]

it'll help curb the game-winning impact of early human aggression.

you mean there aren't already enough obstacles to early human expansion? If they need to curb aggression, they need to find other ways, but WW just freaks me out in Civ4

[Swiss Pauli]

you mean there aren't already enough obstacles to early human expansion? If they need to curb aggression, they need to find other ways, but WW just freaks me out in Civ4

Not enough obstacles to early expansion by means of aggression, in my view. WW gets out of hand in later the game, and if SoZ isn't obsolete by then heaven help us all!

[uberfish]

Although Alex's comments hint that the Firaxis developers might be out of touch with current high level play, I'm going to reserve judgment until I see it. Honestly, stick me in the more features = more value camp so long as they're decently balanced. Warlords didn't add enough to the base game imo.