Vacation plans

[Sky]

I just put in for vacation, second week of June.

6/1 Civilization 4
6/7 GTA:SA

Oh my goodness, happy june everyone!

[Big Gulp]

I just put in for vacation, second week of June.

6/1 Civilization 4
6/7 GTA:SA

Oh my goodness, happy june everyone!

I had no idea that Civ 4 was due so soon, or that GTA:SA was due so late.  Hell, I thought it'd be out next month or so.

[WayAbvPar]

Giddyup! I didn't even know a Civ4 was in the works.

[Paelos]

Please let it fix the dumb cheating, uber-build AI. That would be super. And bring back unit creation from Alpha Centauri!

[Big Gulp]

Please let it fix the dumb cheating, uber-build AI. That would be super. And bring back unit creation from Alpha Centauri!

I'm really hoping that they'd flesh out the modern world more.  Nuke carrying boomers really don't serve too much of a purpose at that stage of the game.  Really you just build your stock units; modern armor and bombers, and that's about it.

I'd like for there to be subtle differences in the unit types, ie, do you want to build your tanks with the cheaper reactive armor, or super expensive, but highly effective composite armor?  Have you achieved a suitable level of combined arms integration, etc, etc, etc.

I guess what I'm really looking for is a modern, computerized version of Supremacy.  The Super Power games were supposed to be that, but they both sucked horribly.

[Sky]

I think Civ III was in many ways a step backwards, much as I thought Civ II was a step backwards from the evolutionary step Colonization took with building up city infrastructure and focusing on crop types, etc. Build up rum factories if you are in an area with lots of sugar, send your average citizen to school to learn to be a skilled citizen, recruit indians, etc. Then in Civ II we were back to the plain old happy/content/unhappy citizens with the rudimentary resource square of Civ I.

So I'm excited to play the new Civ, but the last couple iterations have taught me to temper my excitement somewhat. Right now I imagine it's just a slight upgrade gameplay-wise, but a shift to a 3d engine (omgleet!).

Yeah, traditionally Rockstar releases the pc port in April :( So worth the wait, imo. Hopefully they give it some lovin' like they did for Vice City.

[Stormwaltz]

I liked Civ3's strategic resources, but otherwise I felt it was an inferior version of Civ2. I think the only reason Civ2: Test of Time did so poorly in comparison is The Name of Sid. In many ways, it expanded the design in superior ways.

I've been particularly concerned with how unfriendly the Civ franchise has become to "casual" modders. The joy of Civ2 was that anyone with Notepad and MS Paint could change the game from Civilization to Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or a simulation of evolution. Civ3, with its 3D models and animations, excluded a large portion of the Civ2 mod community. To this day, more and more impressive Civ2 mods are made than Civ3 mods. With Civ4, this is only going to get worse:

"The game is written using flexible XML data files and the Python scripting language so that modders will have no trouble at all creating their own personalized worlds, units, technologies, and historical events. Advanced modders will even be able to control the AI."

What this means is that modding Civ4 will be like modding UT: it will require a team of designers, artists, and coders. It's no longer an achievable goal for a single person with a good idea and gumption.

I decided to become a game designer when I realized I was spending more time modding Civ2 than doing my college writing. This trend makes me a Sad Panda.

EDIT: typo

[Jobu]

I really enjoyed a lot of the additions in Civ3. Strategic resources, borders, culture, and some of the wonders in the expansion are pretty cool (Zeus' Statue, Knights Templar). But what killed it for me is the diplomacy. They should hire the guy from Stardock who did GalCiv to work on their diplomacy AI. But I'll buy Civ4 no matter what, Civ games being the only game I've never uninstalled unless it's for a sequel.

[Stephen Zepp]

This biggest difficulty for me in Civ 3 was that amazingly annoying tendency for cities just recently captured to revert back to their old faction due to lack of cultural advancements. I never could figure out what was the best (or even semi-effective) way to keep a city once it was captured, including jacking up as much area effect cultural benefits as I could. I stopped playing the game due to this, and I was an extremely die hard Civ, Civ2, and Alpha Centauri (plus expansion) player.

I understand the intent behind it, but it was a game busting mechanic for me--took all of the "fun" out of play, since I'd have to capture a city 4 and 5 times, and rebuild city specific cultural buildings over and over again to make any progress. Maybe I was just missing something, but I stopped playing after a few months of this.

[Jobu]

This biggest difficulty for me in Civ 3 was that amazingly annoying tendency for cities just recently captured to revert back to their old faction due to lack of cultural advancements. I never could figure out what was the best (or even semi-effective) way to keep a city once it was captured, including jacking up as much area effect cultural benefits as I could. I stopped playing the game due to this, and I was an extremely die hard Civ, Civ2, and Alpha Centauri (plus expansion) player.

I understand the intent behind it, but it was a game busting mechanic for me--took all of the "fun" out of play, since I'd have to capture a city 4 and 5 times, and rebuild city specific cultural buildings over and over again to make any progress. Maybe I was just missing something, but I stopped playing after a few months of this.

 I think it had to do with even just one citizen who wasn't happy, the city would tip over to the enemy. Converting the entire population to entertainers, or at least enough of the population to make every worker happy usually prevented it. Admittedly, the city would either starve or just be a cash drain, but you need to break a few eggs to make an omelette. They were just French anyways...

I also hated the computers penchant for camping out single squares of land between your borders. The city invariably turned over to you because of culture, but it would just eat tiles up from it's super-massive neighbor cities.

[Sky]

There was diplomacy in Civ III? It was so atrocious, I forgot. I usually play pretty much 'scorch the earth'...but yeah, having the diplomacy of GalCiv would be cool. Hell, if they could improve on it...Another nice addition would be a rich and diverse bunch of events, ala EU2. I never really got into EU2, but I kept going back because of the way events happened through the game (woops, christianity just swept over my poor pagan Iroqious!!) Even putting in state religions like that...

Yes, a lot of the additions were nice, if not well-implemented. Like borders, from SMAC...but then enemies would build in that one square you didn't have covered. Sure, eventually you could absorb it with culture, but ehh...it was pretty annoying.

As I said, I really think they are going to have to work hard to make a good Civ game, oddly enough. And I feel like they may just rest on their laurels and just pop out another version rather than really revisit some core designs that are getting long in the tooth or just don't work out well. And not ruin the core gameplay. Not an enviable task.

[Paelos]

Ah yes, the horrific cultural rebounding. That must die. Borders were good because I remember in Civ 2 where they wouldn't just build in between the borders, they would build all over your shit. At least that went away. Still, there was never any AI semblance of realism. They were all merely the borg, eating up every available spec of land regardless of whether or not it was all tundra or something. It made conquering that much more of a pain in the ass, especially on islands. The island is like two squares and they build on it. HELLO? That's retarded.

[SirBruce]

To me, the worst part of Civ III was how each turn you had to wait interminably as the AI moved around all of its units along your borders.  I know, I could speed it up by only showing where it ended up, but then I wouldn't know where he came from, which is important.  The problem is the AI seemed obsessed with moving each and every one of its units in semi-random ways, consuming vast quantities of time.  Then it would flip a coin and half the time decide to attack you.  It just was not worth the constant hassle.

Bruce