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TooMuchAbstraction posted:And some unhappiness, yes. Part of the reason slavery worked though was that you could grow back from pop 1 to pop 4 pretty quickly. Carefully managing the unhappiness and your cities' populations could get you a lot more hammers than you could get otherwise. All true, but it wasn't really a mechanic. It was more of just a mathematical formula that the experts knew better than everyone else. No real decision making in the process because no matter what civ you played as or what the geography was, you just bee-lined for bronze working(if I remember correctly), pressed the button, and it worked out 100% of the time. The only challenge and decision making in that process was figuring it out once and from that point on it might as well be a reflex.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 04:59 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 04:11 |
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I laid out my position on religion earlier but I really want to reiterate, I think they missed a key thing when they didnt' give religion any NEGATIVE connotations. It should be useful early on and become almost problematic later on. That'd really change the dynamic I think. Sure your Holy Warriors are loving everyone up, but its 2012 and now no one wants to be your friend and its seriously hurting your happiness and science.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 05:02 |
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That's never going to fly. It's not even a good mechanic either, it just means religion is bad and unfun, and a player who puts effort into it gets punished in the later game.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 05:04 |
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Jastiger posted:I laid out my position on religion earlier but I really want to reiterate, I think they missed a key thing when they didnt' give religion any NEGATIVE connotations. It should be useful early on and become almost problematic later on. That'd really change the dynamic I think. Sure your Holy Warriors are loving everyone up, but its 2012 and now no one wants to be your friend and its seriously hurting your happiness and science. Yeah good luck finding a developer brave enough to open that can of worms
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 05:04 |
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Hell, that's half the reason they've avoided attaching specific bonuses to specific religions - either everything gets the same bonus(Civ IV) or the player gets to pick it themselves(Civ V), instead of opening the by saying that Hinduism is good at X, and Christianity is good at Y.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 05:07 |
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Haifisch posted:Hell, that's half the reason they've avoided attaching specific bonuses to specific religions - either everything gets the same bonus(Civ IV) or the player gets to pick it themselves(Civ V), instead of opening the by saying that Hinduism is good at X, and Christianity is good at Y. Whenever a Hindu unit dies, it returns as a shittier unit if it had 2 or less promotions, and as a better unit if it had 3 or more.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 05:13 |
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*shruG* they are willing to put in slavery and stuff, why not the negative in late game. Why shouldn't you be punished for rushing religion and ignoring science?
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 05:15 |
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Jastiger posted:*shruG* they are willing to put in slavery and stuff, why not the negative in late game. Why shouldn't you be punished for rushing religion and ignoring science? It's not PC bro.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 05:17 |
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Jastiger posted:*shruG* they are willing to put in slavery and stuff, why not the negative in late game. Why shouldn't you be punished for rushing religion and ignoring science? Because nobody would play it then. The idea isn't bad; it's just not fun unless you are playing a more complicated game. In a civ game the punishment would have to come at the time you make the choice, not later. Few people play the end game now. Imagine if the end game is you getting hosed because you loved God once 1000 years ago.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 05:22 |
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The Human Crouton posted:Because nobody would play it then. The idea isn't bad; it's just not fun unless you are playing a more complicated game. Well i can totally imagine that. Oh yeah that huge religious war you had 1000 years ago and set everyone else back, well now they are pissed at you in solidarity. I think it adds more diplomatic and strategic options. IT doesn't have to be "Lol religion is bad" but I think it would mean you have to balance carefully how far down any one tree you want to go. Religion should provide powerful early game bonuses in culture, happiness, and even war, but those should diminish over time and maybe eke over into the negative area if you don't balance it out.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 05:28 |
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The games already tacitly discourage developing religion in the late game. Civ 4 gives you Free Religion while obsoleting the most useful religious buildings and monastaries. Civ 5 greatly increases the costs of missionaries/inquisitors/buildings in the late game and offers literally zero form of universal faith generation past Philosophy and a couple medieval wonders. You obviously continue to pay the dividends for developing a religious game but as the end approaches you're pretty much stuck with what you have, and that's fine. If you want to see the folly of making investment into the early game become a millstone as the game approaches its end, look at Piety and Rationalism being exclusionary before BNW. The end result of that was that Piety was literally a worthless tree that no one picked because they all become wasted policies once Rationalism rolls around.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 05:39 |
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Jastiger posted:I laid out my position on religion earlier but I really want to reiterate, I think they missed a key thing when they didnt' give religion any NEGATIVE connotations. It should be useful early on and become almost problematic later on. That'd really change the dynamic I think. Sure your Holy Warriors are loving everyone up, but its 2012 and now no one wants to be your friend and its seriously hurting your happiness and science. I distinctly remember during the development of Civ 5 that one of the things they wanted to get away from (specifically in the move from the Civ4 civic system to the Civ5 social policy system) was the idea that any choices would have negatives attached to them - instead there would be only positives. So nothing could be lost by selecting an additional policy. Of course it's just a little bit bullshit because Civ5 comes with some pretty big opportunity costs, and while you might gain a little from a given policy you might lose a lot by not selecting another. But I think it was supposed to be a psychological thing, to avoid more casual players being frustrated by the fact that a given policy comes with a negative and they have to do a cost-benefit analysis before picking it (as you would do when switching Civics). Anyway that's just an aside and I don't know if Ed Beach will be sticking by the same philosophy for this one. I'm not sure about religion becoming detrimental in the late-game, I'd rather it just peter out to nothing. I feel like the modern era has enough mechanics in play to keep things interesting (diplomacy, ideologies and more complex ways of doing combat), without players having to contend with an exit strategy for religion. Religion should be kept back as "something to do" in the mid-game, after most of the world has been explored/settled in the early game and it's time to go a-crusadin'. Edit: btw I'm working my way through my first Civ 5 CBP game and I love their implementation of religion. Not only are the beliefs definitely seem a lot more balanced but each founder belief unlocks its own little national wonder, and I love the names they've picked for them. There's a list here: http://civ-5-cbp.wikia.com/wiki/Beliefs Microplastics fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Jun 6, 2016 |
# ? Jun 6, 2016 07:38 |
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Jastiger posted:I laid out my position on religion earlier but I really want to reiterate, I think they missed a key thing when they didnt' give religion any NEGATIVE connotations. It should be useful early on and become almost problematic later on. That'd really change the dynamic I think. Sure your Holy Warriors are loving everyone up, but its 2012 and now no one wants to be your friend and its seriously hurting your happiness and science. Not every religion is anti-science and you're really showing your biases with stuff like this.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 09:17 |
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RagnarokAngel posted:Not every religion is anti-science and you're really showing your biases with stuff like this. Arguably most religions give zero fucks about science (for the most part) except for the followers who are the most extreme and dogmatic Edit: JeremoudCorbynejad posted:Edit: btw I'm working my way through my first Civ 5 CBP game and I love their implementation of religion. Not only are the beliefs definitely seem a lot more balanced but each founder belief unlocks its own little national wonder, and I love the names they've picked for them. There's a list here: http://civ-5-cbp.wikia.com/wiki/Beliefs The Community Balance Patch fixes a lot of the complaints about Civ 5 that I've seen pop up in this thread including: gold-spamming City States, Global Happiness, belief imbalances, (civilian) unit stacking, dead policy trees, weird tech consequences due to the oddly shaped tech tree, and some other things. It's just really good. Xelkelvos fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Jun 6, 2016 |
# ? Jun 6, 2016 09:25 |
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Even the most extreme and dogmatic religious fanatics can be pro-science. The Japanese army during WW2 worshiped the emperor as a living god and were even willing to kill themselves for their beliefs, yet they still valued industry and technology as the best way to demonstrate their nationalist superiority. Conversely, secularism can also be anti-science.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 09:30 |
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Xelkelvos posted:The Community Balance Patch fixes a lot of the complaints about Civ 5 that I've seen pop up in this thread including: gold-spamming City States, Global Happiness, belief imbalances, (civilian) unit stacking, dead policy trees, weird tech consequences due to the oddly shaped tech tree, and some other things. It really is a whole new game. The happiness system is completely redesigned and takes some getting used to, but I like it so much more. Anyone with an interest in Civ6 (so anyone in this thread) should definitely give it a spin. I put a link in the bottom of the OP.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 10:04 |
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Clarste posted:Conversely, secularism can also be anti-science. If you want some examples of that, look at the antivaxxers, anti-GMO whingers, animal rights activists (these guys actually do have a point, but I digress), etc., most of which are dominated by secularists. The idea that science and religion are mutually exclusive stems largely from the Protestant cults that are trying to appeal to ignorance, particularly creationists and their ilk, from my understanding.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 10:06 |
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Since the best religious picks include tithe and pagodas which boost money, happiness and culture you actually become better at science for being pious in Civ5. As long as you don't actually pick piety of course.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 10:52 |
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Or you do pick Piety and have a shot at the the reformation belief "Jesuit Education". Nahhh, religion is totally opposed to science.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 13:06 |
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Yeah you guys already covered it but the whole "religion or science" thing is just not historically accurate at all.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 13:11 |
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sarmhan posted:That's never going to fly. It's not even a good mechanic either, it just means religion is bad and unfun, and a player who puts effort into it gets punished in the later game. Also, there's something the Beyond Earth thread talked about extensively: it's very popular in game theory and creation nowadays to offer the player choices between two or more unambiguous positives rather than offering sets of benefits-and-drawbacks.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 13:20 |
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RagnarokAngel posted:Not every religion is anti-science and you're really showing your biases with stuff like this. Oh I'm totally biased, I'm not going to deny it, haha. Obviously religion doesn't necessarily have to be anti science, though it has a pretty long history of it, so I think it'd be realistic to include that. For example where you get to buy unit with faith and stuff like that, that can be a very powerful tool if you're generating a ton of faith. That'd be "speccing" super far into the religion tree as an analogue. I'd say that the opportunity cost of relying on faith for your productivity or advancements could cost you in other areas similar to the way they were mentioning that going after just culture could have opportunity costs else where. I think it'd be another item that you'd have to think about how far down that path you want to go because it could have some negatives if you keep at it long enough, just like other focuses used to.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 14:03 |
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First, civ isn't realistic, so focusing on realism vs. Fun is really missing the point. Your idea punishes people for using a major game mechanic. That's a terrible idea. Second, I feel I should point out many religions led to huge scientific advancement, the most obvious being golden age of Islam but also hinduism, Buddhism and confucianism. Seriously knock off this "stupid sky wizard believers " crap.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 14:12 |
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Jastiger posted:Oh I'm totally biased, I'm not going to deny it, haha. IDK, I think religion's history with science kind of equally goes in both directions. This is a simplified pop history version but it's like in the medieval period, the christian world was all about favouring religious dogma while the islamic world was all about doing as much science as possible as the true religious path. Then the age of enlightenment came about and things changed a bit. It's all about how you do it. There are certainly a lot of anti science religious stances today, but there also a lot of religious scientists. Like as an example, there's also a lot of anti scientific stuff in Communist (and Capitialist TBF) ideologies as well, but it doesn't really make sense to make that a thing.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 14:16 |
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There are already penalties for emphasizing religion: opportunity costs.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 14:29 |
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The Human Crouton posted:Religion didn't do anything in Civ 4. All I remember is that every religion did the same thing: give you some gold and let you see more tiles. The base religious system in V is great. The fact that the AI can spam missionaries doesn't change that the idea was fundamentally sound. What a loving ignorant post.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 17:39 |
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Jastiger posted:I laid out my position on religion earlier but I really want to reiterate, I think they missed a key thing when they didnt' give religion any NEGATIVE connotations. It should be useful early on and become almost problematic later on. That'd really change the dynamic I think. Sure your Holy Warriors are loving everyone up, but its 2012 and now no one wants to be your friend and its seriously hurting your happiness and science. Mechanics that punish the player (outside of the implicit punishment that comes from suboptimal play) aren't very fun or interesting. There's a reason why they have golden ages and not dark ages. I don't want to play Civ3 Pollution-style whack-a-mole.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 17:52 |
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Dark ages sound at least a little cool.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 18:20 |
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I wouldn't have a problem with Dark Ages as long as: 1- Its the players fault they are there for doing dumb poo poo all the time and 2- They can be recovered from.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 18:35 |
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To me, "Dark Ages" just sound like the player losing a bunch of cities to an AI in a war and having to work hard to get back on their feet afterwards.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 18:46 |
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Why do you feel the need to especially punish the stupid with game mechanics? Isn't the fact that they fail to capitalize and good mechanics punishment enough? What did stupid people ever do to you?
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 18:48 |
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CountFosco posted:Why do you feel the need to especially punish the stupid with game mechanics? Isn't the fact that they fail to capitalize and good mechanics punishment enough? What did stupid people ever do to you? Exist?
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 18:53 |
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You could get dark ages in Civ4. I mean, they weren't called dark ages, but you could find yourself with your economy in the shitter, running only 10-20% science with the rest going towards maintenance costs and keeping your citizens happy. If you replace "Dark Ages" with "organic failure state" then that's fine. You should be allowed to mismanage your empire, and suffer the consequences for it. It just needs to be more subtle than "oh you invested in religion? Well then gently caress you buddy" like some atheist version of
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 18:57 |
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:You could get dark ages in Civ4. I mean, they weren't called dark ages, but you could find yourself with your economy in the shitter, running only 10-20% science with the rest going towards maintenance costs and keeping your citizens happy. If you replace "Dark Ages" with "organic failure state" then that's fine. You should be allowed to mismanage your empire, and suffer the consequences for it. It just needs to be more subtle than "oh you invested in religion? Well then gently caress you buddy" like some atheist version of Yeah, exactly. This is also a problem I have with the tech bonuses in Civ6. From what I've seen, it looks like they're all something like "build an improvement" or "build a worker" or something that you ALREADY want to do anyway. Its like a lot of the quests in Civ5, where you'll get improved City State relations for hooking up your Gems. But you were already going to do that because it provides happiness and increased tile yield, so you're basically getting improved relations for free. The game itself already incentivizes good play, you don't need arbitrary free bonuses to further incentivize it.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 21:10 |
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I don't necessarily subscribe to the video game design philosophy of "anything the slightest bit negative is unfun and thus should never be part of a game". To me it's like a kid whining that he can't have cake and ice cream for every meal 3 times a day. At some point cake only tastes good because it's a treat and gets sickening when you have it every day. Sometimes it is actually good to use penalties as a balancing mechanic so long as there is still a gameplay reason and benefit to (sometimes) choosing that cursed sword so the player has an interesting choice to make.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 21:15 |
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MrChupon posted:I don't necessarily subscribe to the video game design philosophy of "anything the slightest bit negative is unfun and thus should never be part of a game". To me it's like a kid whining that he can't have cake and ice cream for every meal 3 times a day. At some point cake only tastes good because it's a treat and gets sickening when you have it every day. I think the general idea is that an easier way to balance games is that some mechanic is either going to be bad or good and stick to that. Like, with civics it's all good stuff, not good and bad stuff. Presumably this could also apply to negative things. You'll find that in stuff like Risk: Legacy where you're sometimes forced to pick from a selection of negative things. Or in games like Apocalypse world, you're often rolling not to determine if something bad happens, but how bad it is. Stuff like that. Civ definitely prefers to give players selections of bonuses with opportunity costs being the major drawbacks and the limited amount of bonuses you can take to give you an interesting choice.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 21:23 |
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MrChupon posted:Sometimes it is actually good to use penalties as a balancing mechanic so long as there is still a gameplay reason and benefit to (sometimes) choosing that cursed sword so the player has an interesting choice to make. As other people already said, there is a penalty, it only dont strike you immediately. All is good but you cat have all. Make bad choices and you will lag behind and lose, that's the penalty In Civ 5 I always felt that some social policies, for instance, are just too good not to choose, while others are a waste. The bad ones also only provide bonuses, only they arent as good as the good ones, so you will be punished for choosing then. Or maybe Im just bad. In my games I will 100% the times take liberty and tradition at start, and later usually rationalism or (less often) aesthetics. Everything else seems like a waste of culture points. And in the ideology, always Order. Perhaps is just my play style, but anytime I tried to do different I lost the game
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 21:25 |
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Borsche69 posted:Yeah, exactly. This is also a problem I have with the tech bonuses in Civ6. From what I've seen, it looks like they're all something like "build an improvement" or "build a worker" or something that you ALREADY want to do anyway. Its like a lot of the quests in Civ5, where you'll get improved City State relations for hooking up your Gems. But you were already going to do that because it provides happiness and increased tile yield, so you're basically getting improved relations for free. The game itself already incentivizes good play, you don't need arbitrary free bonuses to further incentivize it.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 21:33 |
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Elias_Maluco posted:Or maybe Im just bad. In my games I will 100% the times take liberty and tradition at start, and later usually rationalism or (less often) aesthetics. Everything else seems like a waste of culture points. And in the ideology, always Order. Perhaps is just my play style, but anytime I tried to do different I lost the game Well, at least you aren't going Honor or Piety. Most people consider Tradition to be strictly superior to Liberty. Rationalism is very good. Aside from maxing out those two trees, generally you'll have a few spare policies that can be put into Patronage, or if going for a cultural victory, Aesthetics. In my games, I generally complete Tradition, get a policy or two into Patronage before Rationalism opens, then do Rationalism and ideology tenets for the rest of the game. As for ideologies, Freedom is by far the best for tall players (half food consumption for specialists! half unhappiness from specialist population!). Order and Autocracy are both good for wide players, depending on your approach. Unfortunately, the game favors going tall, so Freedom is the most frequently-picked...
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 21:53 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 04:11 |
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Yeah Tradition, Rationalism, and Freedom are objectively the best trees to go into for the min/maxer. It really shouldn't be that way though and I hope they fix that in Civ 6. The influence per turn with trade routes is mega OP.
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 21:57 |