(March 20th, 2013, 14:07)SevenSpirits Wrote: Yeah, but those games are not PC-only, let alone steam only. Which was the question.
Why would that be a question? Consoles are irrelevant. I thought he meant whether it was possible to play Civ5 without using Steam. There are some games that have both Steam and non-Steam versions, though none that I mentioned were ones.
For Skyrim and other console games, steam stats are a terrible indicator of copies sold and current players, because a significant portion of copies sold will have been on consoles. If you use steam stats to estimate these numbers you will be way off, and get silly results like Civ V comparing favorably to them.
(March 20th, 2013, 08:12)Ichabod Wrote: Did anyone else see anything about the changes to Cultural victory? I wonder why they decided to change it, since the Civ 5 cultural victory is one of the few areas where I think Civ 5 made something better than Civ 4.
"Culture Victory
-This is tied to your cultural pressure that you make from tourism
-if your lifetime accumulation of Tourism exceeds each other civs lifetime accumulation of Culture, you will achieve a Culture Victory - Ed Beach"
Tourism is such a terrible name for this concept. I'm hoping there's a misunderstanding somewhere, maybe tourism, together with archeology is a part of a new "cultural pressure" mechanic. Influence could be a good name (anything other than Tourism).
And tourism is supposed to be a new tile yield. So we can get tiles with food, production, gold, science, faith, culture and tourism? And how are you going to accumulate tourism so fast in order to make a cultural victory possible? You'll need thousands of tourism to win a CV and I don't think you can start accumulating it in the Ancient Age...
Not that I've ever played CiV, but this seems to me to be incredibly gamey.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
(March 20th, 2013, 14:10)Ichabod Wrote: No comment on the Tourism mechanic? Is everybody okay with the possibility of reading "Nobunaga wins a Touristic Victory"?
Since I have currently no clue how it will really work I withhold judgement. Not to mention in a game with Attila, Monty etc Nobunaga-san might be the most cultured after all
About numbers / success etc.: CiV is /was clearly enough success that they are still able to produce Expansions. Usually you don't keep a team developing expansions if you don't expect it to make money. Did it sell better than CIV? No clue. I guess thats for Firaxis to answer.
(March 20th, 2013, 14:23)Ichabod Wrote: Let's just see the case of Civ V. Was Civ IV a commercial failure? By the logic of commercial success influencing game mechanics, I'd guess it was, since Civ V was so different from it. But if Civ IV was a successful game, why change it as much as they did?
It was not neccessrily a failure. But they believed that the changes would bring more players (= morre money) than the micromanage intensity of CIV. What they changes did was that the audience got altered. If it braught them more money then CiVI will be more similar to it than to cIV.
But I contest the supposed micro intesivity of Civ IV. If you play the game doing the following:
*Automating workers
*Following suggested tech research and city builds
*Considering that newer civics are better civics
*Playing below noble difficulty
Suddenly, Civ IV is a very casual game. It still gives the "one more turn" vibes and I know a lot of people that played it like that (I was one of them before discovering civanatics).
On the otehr hand, T-Hawk showed that Civ V can also be played with a deeper level of complexity.
There's no need to play Civ IV in a micro-extreme way. You can do it, but you don't have to. There was no reason to change it to make it more casual, at least I can't see why you would, since it was already casual enough. I can see how a paradox game can be considered too complex to be mainstream, since if you don't delve into the Menus full of information, it seems like nothing is happening. But Civ IV has a lot of things happening outside the complexity -> huts, exploration, barbs, techs, buildings, units, WONDERS (the casual player best friend)... Heck, you can play civ IV without ever acessing the city screen.
Maybe the money guys didn't want to pay for a game that can be casual and can be complex. They only wanted a casual game, getting almost the same money, with way less cost. But I fail to see an argument that Civ IV mechanic-wise is less suited for casual play than Civ V and I don't think that played a significant role in the design. The art style and direction, the shinning graphics, that was all directed at casuals, from what I can see of Civ V. The mechanics, not so much.
My conclusion is, Civ V has it flaws because it has a flawed design, not because it was designed as a casual game. Maybe I'm being naive here, but I blame the Civ V design more on Jon Shafer's passion for Panzer General than a executive decision for a more casual game.
There is one part of the Civ5's design that makes it almost casualish, and that is its combat. Seriously. It draws on assymetric-style combat from stuff like RPGs, where a tiny elite core of units, if microed with a modicum of skill, will slaughter a much greater force of the AI's armies. As opposed to Civ4, which goes by a more poker-style combat system, where you wager as much military as you can afford.
Of course, my perspective could be tainted the fact I pretty much only play SP Civ5 and MP Civ4.
(March 20th, 2013, 16:35)Nicolae Carpathia Wrote: There is one part of the Civ5's design that makes it almost casualish, and that is its combat. Seriously. It draws on assymetric-style combat from stuff like RPGs, where a tiny elite core of units, if microed with a modicum of skill, will slaughter a much greater force of the AI's armies. As opposed to Civ4, which goes by a more poker-style combat system, where you wager as much military as you can afford.
Of course, my perspective could be tainted the fact I pretty much only play SP Civ5 and MP Civ4.
Well, that and the choke points were way too small making the goal of Panzer General style warfare not happen. Stack beefy guy in front, lob ranged from behind. Good luck!
Did I mention the AI is stupid? It's really stupid at Civ5 combat.
(March 20th, 2013, 15:48)Ichabod Wrote: There's no need to play Civ IV in a micro-extreme way. You can do it, but you don't have to. There was no reason to change it to make it more casual, at least I can't see why you would, since it was already casual enough.
Sure, there were reasons to casual-ify Civ 4. The gold/research slider was a big one, that is not at all intuitive compared to any other strategy game. It's counterintuitive that holding gold is bad and negative income is good, because it means you're turning it into research. City growth is easy to get wrong; it's not obvious that you need +6 food surplus for real growth when the governor and auto-workers aim for about +3. The whole religion system is badly misunderstood, that it really isn't as impactful as hyped, that spreading a religion beyond the first is totally useless, that there is no conflict between religions and no downside to having an opponent's. Other mechanics have subtle holes, like how walls don't do anything in a city already at 60% culture. Combat math is really opaque, depending on tons of tricky rules about rounds and damage and the siege mechanics. Even wonders as you mention are easy to get wrong, with several that aren't worth their costs (Artemis), obsolete too quickly (Colossus, Parthenon), or even almost don't work (Statue of Zeus because of the AI war weariness discounts, Great Wall does nothing against non-barbarians.)
Civ 5 has considerably fewer pitfalls for oblivious and new players, and while that doesn't matter to us hardcore players who know to avoid them anyway, it does go a long way towards being more immediately understandable for the casual crowd.
And don't forget that Civ 5 looks immensely spiffy and shiny. That makes a real difference too, however much anyone claims it doesn't. Civ 5 really is more enjoyable by being so pretty. Even I still sometimes pan the map over to look at the sparkly water when it catches my eye.
(March 20th, 2013, 15:48)Ichabod Wrote: There's no need to play Civ IV in a micro-extreme way. You can do it, but you don't have to. There was no reason to change it to make it more casual, at least I can't see why you would, since it was already casual enough.
Sure, there were reasons to casual-ify Civ 4. The gold/research slider was a big one, that is not at all intuitive compared to any other strategy game. It's counterintuitive that holding gold is bad and negative income is good, because it means you're turning it into research. City growth is easy to get wrong; it's not obvious that you need +6 food surplus for real growth when the governor and auto-workers aim for about +3. The whole religion system is badly misunderstood, that it really isn't as impactful as hyped, that spreading a religion beyond the first is totally useless, that there is no conflict between religions and no downside to having an opponent's. Other mechanics have subtle holes, like how walls don't do anything in a city already at 60% culture. Combat math is really opaque, depending on tons of tricky rules about rounds and damage and the siege mechanics. Even wonders as you mention are easy to get wrong, with several that aren't worth their costs (Artemis), obsolete too quickly (Colossus, Parthenon), or even almost don't work (Statue of Zeus because of the AI war weariness discounts, Great Wall does nothing against non-barbarians.)
Civ 5 has considerably fewer pitfalls for oblivious and new players, and while that doesn't matter to us hardcore players who know to avoid them anyway, it does go a long way towards being more immediately understandable for the casual crowd.
And don't forget that Civ 5 looks immensely spiffy and shiny. That makes a real difference too, however much anyone claims it doesn't. Civ 5 really is more enjoyable by being so pretty. Even I still sometimes pan the map over to look at the sparkly water when it catches my eye.
Well, I agree that the features you listed are indeed complicated. For example, I played the game for a year or so before I realized that commerce was something different from gold and that it was related to science. But that's exactly where my point is. I was able to play the game for a whole year, having a lot of fun (that made me start reading a community site for the game), without understanding those mechanics. In other words, I was playing the game casually.
Speaking as someone that started playing Civ with Civ IV, I can say that it's extremely accessible for casual play. Of course, I have the profile of the typical Civ gamer, that certainly helped. But I don't think there are a lot of FPS players that were converted by Civ V. You need a certain player profile for a Civ game, no matter how casual you make it. And I don't think Civ V mechanics attracted more people than Civ IV... I just can't see it.
I have a lot of friends that play the Civilization series, none of them play it "serious" (as in, opposed to casual). What they do is fire up a chieftain difficulty game from time to time, automate all workers (the first thing the friend who presented me to civ said was: "when you build one of these worker units, press "a", so they start working ), completely disregard the AI in the game, build every single building avaiable for every city, build almost every wonder (no matter if it's good or not) and win by science or time. Civ IV enable this as much as Civ V.
Regarding shiny graphics, that is one thing I agree completely. If you want to elude the casual players, go for graphics and presentation. It means way more than Mechanics. Casual players just need Mechanics that don't get in their way, they don't need mechanics that they can easily understand. Civ IV doesn't have any mechanic that get in the way, as far as I can tell. I don't consider any of the mechanics you listed to be this kind (even combat, which can be complicated, is simplified in the "percentage of victory" that is shown -> it's easy to understand what will happen, even though you can't understand why it happens this way).
(March 20th, 2013, 21:47)Ichabod Wrote: Well, I agree that the features you listed are indeed complicated. For example, I played the game for a year or so before I realized that commerce was something different from gold and that it was related to science. But that's exactly where my point is. I was able to play the game for a whole year, having a lot of fun (that made me start reading a community site for the game), without understanding those mechanics. In other words, I was playing the game casually.
Uhm.... I knew what science modifiers did and meant, but I never realized til just now that gold modifying buildings only modify gold and not all commerce, I saw the coins and didn't question them being the same/different.....
On topic, I feel like a good say to sum it up is that while CivIV had aspects that cater to both casual and hardcore players, CivV focused on the casual pretty much to the exclusion of hardcore playing. And that I agree that casual and hardcore don't have to be exclusive, as long as both are an option.
(March 20th, 2013, 21:47)Ichabod Wrote: Well, I agree that the features you listed are indeed complicated. For example, I played the game for a year or so before I realized that commerce was something different from gold and that it was related to science. But that's exactly where my point is. I was able to play the game for a whole year, having a lot of fun (that made me start reading a community site for the game), without understanding those mechanics. In other words, I was playing the game casually.
Uhm.... I knew what science modifiers did and meant, but I never realized til just now that gold modifying buildings only modify gold and not all commerce, I saw the coins and didn't question them being the same/different.....
Ooof. Markets, grocers, and banks are decent, but not that good...
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
