Civ 6 Release and Update Discussion Thread

[Molach]

I'm guessing that more work was done on civ 6 AI than the civ 4 AI, and that civ6's AI is more sophisticated than civ 4....but that the challenges faced by current ruleset (1upt) are way harder than 4 had to contend with.

I mean, designate units as city defenders (2 per city) and build up a stack designated for offensive ops or counterattacks...each unit could do it's thing in a vacuum, not bother about other units. 

Both MoO and civ4 had stacks, but once you defeated their main invation force, the AI would frequently keep sending small, doomed stacks into your lands. AI was far from smart then.

But Civ 6 is a whole different story. (Even) humans find it frustrating to wheel an army into attack - the  order you move units in is super impotant, and getting melee-units up front and ranged behind is a good idea. Also knowing when to retreat an injured unit, and when not to because that would hold up the entire Conga-line are more intuitive skills than something you can easily code.

So yeah. Waiting for stacking mod.

[Brian Shanahan]

So what? If something is hard to do, half arse it?

Well, yes.  Perfect is the enemy of the good enough.  Shipping is a feature, your product must have it.  Civ 5's AI is good-enough for at least half its audience.

Half arsing isn't good enough, not even close.

But then again we're in the middle of late stage capitalism where quality isn't even a consideration.

[T-hawk]

Ha, I typed Civ 5 out of habit, I meant Civ 6. Well, the sentiment really applies to both anyway.

[Rowain]

According to Firaxis Civ6 has already more than 1 million players 5 days ago ( facebook ).

There are already various Mods out there that do fix some UI-problems/weed-moves (that shouldn't be there in the first place I give you that). I think making the game highly Mod-able replaces thorough testing in this part. Chao's Quick UI for example shows all the food/ hammers needed to finish - info + onto which tile the city will expand and when and so on.

[yuris125]

Half arsing isn't good enough, not even close.

But then again we're in the middle of late stage capitalism where quality isn't even a consideration.

Capitalism has nothing to do with it. Doing things well enough to satisfy boss's requirements and not making more effort than strictly necessary is human nature

The criteria of what is good enough went down in Steam era because it's much easier to deliver patches, so developers/publishers no longer have to convince the user to go to a website and download the latest patch when they just brought home CD with a game and are impatient to play it. At least that's the way I see it

Much maligned Civ5 AI is good enough for a lot of people, and it being bad is actually a reason why - solving a puzzle the AI presents and winning battles without losing a single unit is fun. For many it's more fun than determining the optimal composition of the stack to deal with AI's stack, and losing units in any case

[Hail]

So what? If something is hard to do, half arse it?

Well, yes.  Perfect is the enemy of the good enough.  Shipping is a feature, your product must have it.  Civ 5's AI is good-enough for at least half its audience.

Half arsing isn't good enough, not even close.

But then again we're in the middle of late stage capitalism where quality isn't even a consideration.

releasing games carries no liabilities. nowdays the devs and the publishers behind them can get away with a lot. TW: Rome II release is just one example.

Half arsing isn't good enough, not even close.

But then again we're in the middle of late stage capitalism where quality isn't even a consideration.

Capitalism has nothing to do with it. Doing things well enough to satisfy boss's requirements and not making more effort than strictly necessary is human nature

The criteria of what is good enough went down in Steam era because it's much easier to deliver patches, so developers/publishers no longer have to convince the user to go to a website and download the latest patch when they just brought home CD with a game and are impatient to play it. At least that's the way I see it

Much maligned Civ5 AI is good enough for a lot of people, and it being bad is actually a reason why - solving a puzzle the AI presents and winning battles without losing a single unit is fun. For many it's more fun than determining the optimal composition of the stack to deal with AI's stack, and losing units in any case

working 70 hours per week and begging to extend deadlines is also part of human nature?

P.S. what civ5's AI excels at is giving the player a feeling of superiority.

[yuris125]

releasing games carries no liabilities. nowdays the devs and the publishers behind them can get away with a lot. TW: Rome II release is just one example.

Applies to any software. I don't know how it happened that software licence agreements which absolve developers of any liability became the norm. But they did, and there's no sign of change there

working 70 hours per week and begging to extend deadlines is also part of human nature?

Certainly not, forcing people to work unpaid hours is pretty close to slavery. However, it's not really caused by capitalism, happens in other government systems as well (except the motivation is to increase the bottom line in one case, meet five-year-plan demands in another)

[Sirian]

The Frankenstein test groups members are the same so I'm not guessing. Unless you want to defend WPC.

"Defend WPC" isn't a phrase with any meaning for me. I don't visit there, never have been a member.

I joined the online Civ community fifteen years ago, with the release of Civ3, and at that time, there was only Apolyton and CivFanatics Center. Nearly all of the single player testers for Civ4 (with the exception of Sulla) were chosen from those two sites. Realms Beyond was a Diablo site at that time. I was among the (approximately) dozen RB Diablo players with an interest in Civ who were responsible for starting up RBCiv. Some others came to RB from CFC or Poly, new blood to our little community here. The Civ4 MP testers all came from the CivPlayers ladder community.

Since the Civ5 early testers were a subset of the Civ4 single player testers, who all originated from Poly and CFC, your challenge to me doesn't even make sense.

Soren liked hearing from a lot of voices. You can see he still does today, with OTC having a long, public Early Access where things were hammered on and iterated to a great extent. Jon's new game, he has been off working on his own for a number of years, with a few contributors and a tight set of testers and advisors. It's a design style difference that has persisted beyond their terms of holding the keys to Civ. Jon tapped a smaller portion of the same larger pool of testers he had worked with on Civ4. And I have NO problem defending the testing work done behind the scenes on both games. It was the same people testing both projects, with the same sets of concerns, the same arguments, the same points of view and priorities. Perhaps Civ5 missed some of the CivPlayers input that Civ4 received, but the leads of neither Civ5 nor Civ6 held the same priority for MP prototyping and iteration that Soren maintained. (These things are self-evident.)

Dale's meltdown isn't something I followed closely, nor is the Civ community over the past five years. I have been off playing other things, doing other things. Sulla was recruited to Civ4 by me. He was one of those first dozen or so from RB who played succession games and participated in the earliest days of the RB Civ community, and I still hold him in high regard. Because he lived in Baltimore, he ended up landing a physical job in studio with QA. You would have to ask him what he is able to say about that, but the gig ended before Civ5 work started. I was also the one who recruited Jon Shafer to Civ4. Before that happened, he and I debated quite extensively about Civ3 in public at CFC. (I don't think a record of that persists, but perhaps some here were witness to it.) I still hold Jon in high regard, as well. Both men, like me, had their roots in the community as players first. All of the Civ4 and Civ5 early testers did.


Your views about Civ5 are your own. But projecting your disdain for the game on to people who worked on it, based on (yes) blind guesses and poorly aimed conjecture, is unfair.


- Sirian

[Ichabod]

The hate on Civ 5 is getting a bit old, in my opinion. The criticism and comparison with Civ 4 seems pretty biased to me, especially since most people that talk a lot about the games didn't seem to have played that much Civ 5 (gaming, to me, has a lot of "feel" when it comes to enjoyment, so I don't think you can judge a game fairly if you don't play it). I think our community could have enjoyed a lot more of Civ 5, both in MP and SP, but I guess most people weren't willing to. The reasons for it are many, I think, but I don't see it as a flaw in the community, just as a fact.

Personally, I throughly enjoyed Civ 5 MP (except for some UI quirks that almost made me lose my mind) and I had fun with my few SP games - which is saying a lot, since I can't really play Civ 4 SP anymore (after a long time, bear in mind) and most strategy games in SP don't get my interest either.

[Brian Shanahan]

Capitalism has nothing to do with it. Doing things well enough to satisfy boss's requirements and not making more effort than strictly necessary is human nature

It has everything to do with it. It drives the short-termism in all industries, the cutting of corners, the use of inferior "cheap" materials, the sacking of knowledgable maintenance and repair workers, the long hours on low pay followed by weeks of no hours on no pay. A major game company that's not willing to be even marginally competent in releasing a flagship game is a symptom of the disease the world is working under.

Capitalism is a dead hand at our throats choking the life out of us, we just haven't realised it doesn't have life any more.