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An Early Look At Civilization V
c0mpliant writes "IGN and Gamespot have each released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the articles go on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new 'flavors' to world leaders, and a potentially game-changing, one-unit-per-tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your city's doorsteps. Some features which will not be returning are religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan-related forums."
The pieces can represent anything (battalions or regiments, for instance), so it makes perfect sense.
But then it would also make perfect sense to be able to combine two or more decimated companies into a battalion, while maintaining the experience and combat abilities.
Also... combine companies into a battalion, battalions into regiments, regiments into armies.
You know... as it is not a single tank (or a man) out there on that hex.
Also, turn your infantry or marines into air cavalry by combining them with helicopters. Make a decimated artillery unit into a "artillery support" bonus for your infantry or armor.
Balance it out with experience bonuses and additional turns necessary for combining (training turns).
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I don't think I've ever really understood what happened to strategy gaming on the PC around about the turn of the new Millennium.
I was (and still am) a huge fan and player of Heroes Of Might & Magic (I, II, and III), Master Of Orion (2), Total Annihilation and Civilization (I, II, Call To Power and Test Of Time) - likewise I've played and enjoyed PC FPS games from original Doom & Duke Nukem 3D through to STALKER, Half-Life 2 and Fallout 3 today.
Clearly, the FPS genre exists *BECAUSE* of good 3D graphics but who decided that they were needed for strategy games? Fortunately I totally avoided Master Of Orion III but at various points when they were cheap enough to justify rebuying some games I already had, I bought boxed compilations of all the HoMM and Civilization series, the C&C "10 Years" box set (that has everything up to C&C Generals) and Supreme Commander. In each and every case, the introduction of 3D in those games series has felt, to me, like a "dumbing down" of the games...
Firstly, let's look at HoMM and Civilization. These are both traditionally turn-based games where essentially you need to find and control resources at an "empire" level, as well as defeat enemy armies. They are not solely about combat, they are about using your armies to their best advantage - so what in hell does the game gain from a playability perspective by being able to zoom in to see each individual unit in the middle of a fight, i.e. Civilization III/IV and HoMM IV/V?
Secondly, Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander and C&C/Red Alert. There are RTS games but solely focused on small unit skirmishes and resource management, where development speed is core to winning each game... in which case, why in hell do I want (or even need) to mess around with zooming in and twiddling camera views? Just give me a single isometric view with sprite graphics...
These days, as half-Linux half-Windows user, I tend to play Freeciv quite a lot and IMHO it feels more of a logical progression from the original Civ I/II games.
I just wish that if games companies have finished with sprite-based RTS games, then they'd hand out the source code of the games on the Internet to let some good programmers loose on them. The great thing about the pre-3D games is they've low resource requirements and power consumption so great for laptops, netbooks & long flights.
Incidentally, there are a couple of exceptions to the rule - Stardock's Galactic Civilizations II and Sins Of A Solar Empire are fantastic strategy games with built-in 3D but presumably were designed from the ground up with 3D in mind... ...but otherwise 3D graphics have killed any idea of buying any new strategy games.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Religion actually added a pretty interesting dynamic to the game play in Civilization IV, so I'm actually in the group of people that is disappointed to see it go. It gave another route to victory beyond the military or technological routes.
You are absolutely right about the sillyness of removing Religon from a game about recreating history.
OTOH, Sid Meyer is rather famous for removing gameplay features that detract from the fun of the game. Quite often over the loud objections of simulation purists. It could just be that this was one of those cases. Religon's biggest long-term effect in the CIV4 was just to give AI Civ's one more thing to get pissed off at you about. There was no winning with it either, as no matter which you picked, you'd tick somebody off. This made persuing one of the peaceful victory options (like a cultural win) damn near impossible. At least for me.
"..the only problem is, the civ4 stacks of doom arrive thousands of years before aircraft are invented."
This is what catapults are for, and they come long before aircraft, did you even play Civ? Seriously?
Religon's biggest long-term effect in the CIV4 was just to give AI Civ's one more thing to get pissed off at you about. There was no winning with it either, as no matter which you picked, you'd tick somebody off. This made persuing one of the peaceful victory options (like a cultural win) damn near impossible.
I will respectfully disagree with you:
- Yes, your choice of religion will most likely piss somebody off. (It's not completely unheard of for everyone in a Civ IV game to end up with the same religion, but mostly rare.) But that's just a reflection of the nature of diplomacy in Civ IV in general: nearly everything you do pisses somebody off. Sign a defensive pact with Russia or trade and you make them happy, but their enemy Germany gets surly about it. Diplomacy in Civ IV is less about trying to make everyone happy and more about choosing who to befriend.
- Along those lines, religion added something interesting to the game in making you weigh the costs and benefits of a religion choice. Most of my cities are Buddhist, but my Aztec neighbor is Hindu. Is it more important to me right now to maximize the happiness/production of my cities by choosing Buddhist, or to make Montezuma happier with me by being Hindu?
- The Apostolic Palace, especially in the votes that result from it, add an extra layer of complexity. Ideally you'd like to be the religion that covers your country the most, build the Palace, spread your religion to other civs, and use it to push them around. But there are opportunity costs in achieving all of that, and there's always the chance that someone else spreads the religion more than you have and uses the Palace to push you around instead. In a lot of ways it's a more complex early-game U.N., which I think would be right up your alley if you like diplomacy.
In Civ 1 and 2 I would beeline to Republic, then Gunpowder and then whatever tech gave me Armor - every game was pretty much the same strategy, the only difference was how I was able to go about implementing that strategy (do I found 50 cities as close as possible to each other, or do I just build 10 super cities? Do I trade for basic techs while going to Republic, or do I go it alone?) In either case, while there were other strategies that *could* work, this route through the tech tree was pretty much optimal - even on high difficulty level games I would often have an extremely substantial tech lead on my opponents, and the difference between tech levels was VERY pronounced.
What I like about Civ IV is that I can actually use different strategies, and different focuses depending on my starting situation. Rushing towards a high-tech producing civ isn't always the best move, early wars with nearby foes aren't necessarily bad, and it is entirely possible to fight really effectively despite being behind in the tech race as long as you aren't *too* far behind.
I like that Civ IV lets you do other strategies without feeling like you're intentionally hobbling yourself or playing sub-optimally if you try different techniques.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
It is you that seems to not be playing any competitive Civ4.
Catapults damage at most 4 to 6 units. A stack of doom is 20 to 30 melee units, also with 5 to 10 catapults. You can slam my stack with collateral catapults, but then I slam your city defenders with collateral catapults. Unless your city has a big stack in it, its going down to my stack.
You've got exactly 1 turn to hit my stack with catapults, because I blocked the path to my stack as it approached your city.
In human vs human play, the only defense to big stacks is bigger stacks.
"His name was James Damore."
I hated having to rush for a religion. I find it exceptionally absurd I can end up without one. What primitive people didn't have a religion?
What I wish that you could do is essentially build your own religion.
Not the tiny details, but if you took over another nation you could, for example, incorporate their gods into your pantheon and gain some extra culture. Or do the inverse, demonize someone else's god in yours, reducing war weariness as you fight those 'evil worshipers'.
Or switch to monotheism, which would keep reduce neighboring cultural exchange, both ways.
Or if a religion was in more than one place, you could attempt to 'hijack' it and make your county the HQ. Or you could fork it.
Likewise, you could have various 'holy people' that showed up, like great prophets, but you'd tell them a bunch of different options, and they'd be remembered, and you could direct which of these 'saints' your society focused on. Like, on of them was a great warrior, one of them feed the hungry, one of them was a great mother, whatever.
And it would be interesting to allow various rules, like how you treat sex, for example. Harsh controls on it could result in a lower birthrate but more financial gain. (As children grow up in supported families and hence aren't a drain on society.) Likewise, perhaps certain foods cause sickness for people unfamiliar with them, so you can outlaw them.
And, of course, changing any of this would cause unhappiness for a bit, as people don't like change.
The problem is that Civ IV used real religions, which people don't like mucking with. (And even then only five of them...where were the Greek Gods, or the Eygption ones?) So all you could do is alter how they interacted with society, and not what they were.
Which was rather dumb...I mean, you can make societies and leaders operate totally out of how they actually were. But whatever...if people are going to complain, just name them random things.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?