Adventure 4 - Arathorn's report...

[Sirian]

Well, sometimes wounded pride is a powerful motivator, and I'm afraid we're about to lose Arathorn for good.

We will or we won't based on whether he enjoys the game. That's out of your hands.

- Sirian

[Sirian]

I have my doubts they will reverse directions.

Patching is a process. So is initial development.

Soren made some bad calls in the patching of vanilla Civ3 and reversed them. He's not stuck on pride. There suddenly appeared countless sources of feedback for Civ4, though, and sorting out the complaints and criticisms is not easy.


- Sirian

[LKendter]

I do understand the Civ4 frustration. I can't pinpoint an exact issue at this point. What I have noticed is that unlike Civ3 where I put all other gaming in the trash bin for a long time, is that this time I am still highly active with my non-civ gaming.
I don't know if I haven't recovered from Civ3 burnout, or if it is something more.
It is weird that the game hasn't done more for me, as it got rid of a lot of the MM that I hated.
Now if they would only add a no specialist flag in the governor, as I tend to forget to hit all 4 buttons to limit them.

I now understand why struggled in Epic1. It wasn't the number of cities, so much as to many poor income cities. That epic needed more cottages then I built - period. I am learning from my mistakes, though I know I need to work better on diplomacy.

[Sirian]

Sirian ... in love with religions.

I wish people would stop claiming this. It is clearly false.

Religion is one of the major paths in the game, but one among many.

I didn't touch religion in my first two single player games. I didn't touch it in Epic One. That's three of my first four games. So just... stop already. Stop.

Being ahead of Sirian at the start is not saying much as he's allergic to workers.

This isn't true either. I build more workers in the opening than most.

What does tend to go on is probably a leftover symptom of having played six months of GalCiv. I have a habit of expanding in spurts. I did it twice in this game, exploding from two to six cities in a few turns, then again from nine to sixteen in a few turns. These spurts outgrow my worker base, but I tend to use slavery a lot for new cities and only need but so many improved plots prior to having the happiness necessary to allow them to grow.

I underdid workers here, but that was because I got stuck fighting barbs galore. That was a military and production mistake, but you have to deal with what comes up.

The fact that he can recover from these openings (unlike the poor souls he has led down this particular primrose path) is a testament to his play skill, not the poor design of the game.

I haven't led anybody down the religion path. Anybody who runs all religion all the time isn't paying attention to what I'm actually writing and doing -- and that would seem to include you, since you keep repeating this claim.


While we're on the subject of blind spots, I admit that I've botched my workers in some instances. However, you're too wedded to State Property. We all have our idiosyncracies.


- Sirian

[Arathorn]

Fun? It is not. It's a failure.

I would like to retract this statement -- well, modify it. It should have read "Fun? It is not for me. It's a failure for me." I truly hope that many players, whether they be old or new Civfanatics/RBers/whatever, get hundreds or thousands of hours of enjoyment from Civ4. I'm truly sad I won't (probably) be one of them, going forward.

(and unfortunately, while I learned a lot playing Adventure 4, it wasn't much of a variant to really be great - sorry).

I had higher hopes for it, I agree. I just think the starting land was SO good that it made the game too easy, despite the variant. Hard for me to judge that while starting the game, though. All the floodplains and then grassland in the north with no foes near just made it too straightforward. Add in short borders for little border tension and easier defense and the map was built for a builder game. There just was not enough external challenge. Even with one extra AI, there was plenty of room for a serious economic powerhouse Egypt. Too bad two AIs never decided to gang up on any human player. That could have been interesting.

To Griselda and Sirian for setting up the RB games, I offer a hearty thanks. We obviously don't agree on the game, but having a community like RB is a very valuable thing. And it takes a lot of hard work to maintain. I know there are others, but those two were the most visible to me. Thanks.

To other players -- may you find tremendous fun in Civ4 -- in straightforward games, in normal variants, in odd variants, in all kinds of places.

Arathorn

[Timon of Athens]

Well, reading this I'm almost happy I'm such a bad player - if you're struggling on lower levels the game is anything but not boring. Frustrating, yes, sometimes. But not boring at all.

I do not know Arathorn personally and since I'm new on this community I can't say anything of great value on this discussion - but reading this thread it somehow makes me sad that an obviously great player is about to retire from Civ IV. Arathorns last post already reads like a gentle good-bye. I'm sorry for that !

But if Arathorn did not find what he was seeking or expecting and he no longer does play for what playing is meant to be - to enjoy yourself and be truly mankind - than it makes no sense at all to stick to it violently. Go ahead and find your own ways and pleasures again, Arathorn, and maybe we can welcome you back for Civ V or so. Or maybe for Civ IV v2.0 .

A sad story indeed !

This was just my opinion, so feel free to ignore it

Regards,

Lord Timon

[BeefontheBone]

It's a shame to hear you're leaving - Civ 4 hasn't really caused me to stop playing everything else either, but then I find few games do that these days.

On the subject of the actual report, I noticed a couple of things I thought I'd mention. My understanding is that monopoly techs can't be traded on the turn in which they're researched, so checking the following turn might clear that up a bit. That city of FDR's does have a lighthouse, it's listed in the buildings list on the left - the problem is that the game displays the tile yields as they would be to a player-controlled settler about to settle the spot for some reason - with any luck it'll be fixed in a patch.

[Bezhukov]

Sigh. Well, that didn't work, and I pissed off Sirian to boot.

Perhaps I went a little light on the smileys in my previous posts - and they're real; where I'm from, you like someone, you give 'em the needle here and there, and they return the favor. Point taken on State Property - I do love those late-blooming water mills way too much! This game I had workshops strewn throughout the northlands as far as the eye could see.

The comments about the early workers/religion were half joke, half serious, but I did explain that you're trading hard-core early expansion for diplo control via religion, which you shown to be a viable alternative approach. Arathorn was complaining that he had outgrown you early, yet still had difficulty, and it was in that context that I pointed out that early growth was clearly not as much a priority for you as others.

As for Arathorn, if I wanted to attack you, I would have chosen to compare your behavior to something far worse than a little kid. Heck, I know a lot of people online for whom behaving like a little kid would be a marked improvement! We're guys; we all act like little kids sometimes, and the best thing for me is when someone has the guts to call me on it. YMMV, I guess.

[Atlas]

Arathorn I have read your reports for while at Civfanatics and have always wondered who is you avatar? Don't feel obligated to answer if it is a secret.

Atlas

[microbe]

I personally have not played civ4 too much, for various reasons, mainly real life. I have many complaints about it too. However, civ4 is still a great game, and I am the kind of person that never want to announce a "good-bye", because I KNOW even if I'm not playing, someday I'll start a new game for a reason.

Anyway, Arathorn, I don't think the game is so bad that you absolutely cannot tolerate it. Take it easy, it's just a game and do not put much emotion on it. If you don't like playing for the moment, like me, just watch the forums or actually work on your paid job. :-) But someday, when you feel like playing again, don't hesitate to do it just because you told people you didn't like it.

Oh, and I am looking forward to the next patch too.