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Thats it, I am booting up 4
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Aug 16, 2017 20:33
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Gort posted:Cuv 4's AI kicked my rear end a lot oh yeah absolutely. but i think always-fight-to-the-death has a lot to do with that. even if they removed ranged units from the equation, you could still do a lot of creative things with fewer units just because as long as the unit survives to retreat, that's, let's say 6 more turns you can spend on infrastructure and 6 fewer turns you have to dedicate to training a replacement.
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Aug 16, 2017 20:41
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SirTagz posted:Thats it, I am booting up 4 I'm playing with the mod RevolutionDCM, it's really exciting and civ4 religion is cool and more fun.
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Aug 16, 2017 20:45
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The MNAI mod for FfH2 is good, if anyone's looking to jump back into that scene. I've spent more time playing FfH in the past 2 years than Civ5 and Civ6 combined.
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Aug 16, 2017 20:47
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John F Bennett posted:I did as well and I can't turn back now. I even used to prefer civ 5+6 over 4 but I was mistaken, it seems. I always said that 1UPT was superior but seeing how fluid civ4 plays without it I take it back. I don't even miss "hexes". Also, on current hardware it's all really fast. my graphics card needs replacing but my cpu is up to scratch, it took like 3s to generate a large world. actually, now that i think about it, the reason it took so long is because i used... what was that drat thing called? it was a "realistic terrain and landmasses" generator that used perlin noise etc and that's what made mapgen take forever, right? i loved it but i hated that load time. maybe i should try it again. e: oh yeah it was perfectworld! Fur20 fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Aug 16, 2017 |
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Aug 16, 2017 20:51
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You can run the Civ V version of PerfectWorld in WorldBuilder and it'll take seconds, if not milliseconds. I doubt the original was all that much slower. I do wonder sometimes what exactly Civ does when starting a game that makes it take so long to load. It can't be down to worldgen, these maps just aren't large enough for that. e: It's got to be the graphics, surely. Loading from disk takes an age.
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Aug 16, 2017 21:48
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Fuligin posted:It worked well enough for the base game, but it was not at all designed for anything like Fall from Heaven. It's a shame that Firaxis still hasn't made a Civ as good as IV and that future prospects aren't any brighter. To be fair, when Civ 5 was first announced the devs basically said "Civ 4 was the pinnacle of that kind of game, so we're going to start over and redesign the game from the ground up." Civ 6 doesn't compare real well to Civ 2, though Also PerfectWorld makes really beautiful and realistic maps, but I learned from using it that beautiful and realistic does not necessarily = more fun to play Civ on. In both 4 and 5 I found Fractal to be the most consistently fun and interesting maps. e: I'm still playing Civ 4 now, and it's really good in a lot of ways, but man warfare is a slog once the stacks get really sizable. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Aug 16, 2017 |
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Aug 16, 2017 21:55
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Yeah okay after a long hiatus I'm gonna give IV a spin. I burned out on IV because I got bored of the sim-ness of it. That's what I like about VI--that's it's more a game, less a sim--but now I'm tired of playing the game and want to 'sperg about whatever fictional civilization I'm building. edit: Holy poo poo I had forgotten how much faster the load time is on IV 
Judgy Fucker fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Aug 16, 2017 |
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Aug 16, 2017 22:07
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lol just lol if you aren't playing Civ IV: Caveman2Cosmos and trying to find all 187 kinds of parrot for their unique individual cultural and research benefits.
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Aug 16, 2017 22:11
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The best thing about 4, by far, is that the AI is actually reasonably rational and reasonably competent at warfare. Playing 4 again really puts up on a flashing neon sign what a catastrophe the AI in Civ 5 is. And it somehow--I didn't think it was possible, you have to give the devs credit--got worse in 6.
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Aug 16, 2017 22:16
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it's not that you can't make a good 1upt AI, it's that firaxis didn't even try. but that goes for a lot of stuff in V and VI. minimum viable product seems to have been the guiding light for most features. considering how popular V ended up being, maybe that was the correct (business) approach. an uncomfortable thought.
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Aug 16, 2017 22:29
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Prav posted:it's not that you can't make a good 1upt AI, it's that firaxis didn't even try. but that goes for a lot of stuff in V and VI. minimum viable product seems to have been the guiding light for most features. It really makes me wonder what the point of shifting to 1UPT was if they couldn't program an AI that knew how to use the system effectively. With Civ 5 I can easily see them being too far into development by the time they figured out the computer was never going to be able to wage war effectively, but then they stuck with almost the exact same system in 6. Battle Brothers manages to do 1UPT hex-based combat AI far better than the last two Civs, and it was developed by a team of five people. Its AI knows how to use terrain effectively, keep its ranged units away from the front line and screen them with melee units, and go for the weak spots in your battle line. I say all this to point out that it's not like developing a competent AI can't be done, it just appears it was never a serious priority for Firaxis.
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Aug 16, 2017 22:57
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Communist Walrus posted:It really makes me wonder what the point of shifting to 1UPT was if they couldn't program an AI that knew how to use the system effectively. With Civ 5 I can easily see them being too far into development by the time they figured out the computer was never going to be able to wage war effectively, but then they stuck with almost the exact same system in 6. 1UPT worked ok in panzer general, and some people complained very very strongly about deathstacks in Civ4, and Renegade Designer Jon Shafer was convinced he had the SOLUTION to make the combat more tactical and fun. Except that at the scale / hexes Civ uses, 1UPT does not work, and while they could have done a bunch of stuff to try to work on it they did nothing, shipped the stuff that wasn't working, and called it good because they knew it would sell anyway. And so it did. The larger question of "why make anything other than watered down garbage if the fans buy it" is a fair one but I feel it's missing the point a bit. Right now strategy gamers have no real alternatives other than these watered down strategy games that don't quite click and so that's what they buy, plus there's always new players entering the pool, and civ is a very established franchise. The discouraging thing is that Firaxis has shipped several like this so far: Civ 5, Civ BE, and now Civ 6 that all follow the same trend and show no signs of progress. Pretty sure the Civ 6 expansion isn't going to fix it either so that's like almost a decade of lovely combat in the Civ series
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Aug 16, 2017 23:04
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Incoming unpopular opinion alert: the greater problem is that tactical combat in general doesn't really work in Civ. The best Civ in the series for warfare was Civ 2--for the way Civ works, all battles ending with a unit destroyed is the Right Thing and moving away from that was a mistake.
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Aug 16, 2017 23:13
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Eric the Mauve posted:Incoming unpopular opinion alert: the greater problem is that tactical combat in general doesn't really work in Civ. The best Civ in the series for warfare was Civ 2--for the way Civ works, all battles ending with a unit destroyed is the Right Thing and moving away from that was a mistake. I'm glad you liked that particular implementation, the thing is that there's lots of room between civ 1/civ 2, and civ 4, and civ 6, and yet still more combat systems that may not even have been tried yet. It doesn't seem as if Firaxis is concerning themselves with trying them, or making the game fun or challenging, just selling units by repackaging the game with some slight changes and that part is working very well for them.
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Aug 16, 2017 23:16
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I mean welcome to the video game industry in 2017. If people are going to keep buying the game by the millions so long as the presentation and marketing are slick, there's no reason to spend a dime or an hour more than absolutely necessary on coherent design or working gameplay. Or put more simply, a dollar spent on marketing yields more sales than a dollar spent on functional code. So, yeah, 1UPT is not the reason combat sucks, nor is it the reason the diplomatic AI is essentially nonexistent.
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Aug 16, 2017 23:27
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Eric the Mauve posted:I mean welcome to the video game industry in 2017. If people are going to keep buying the game by the millions so long as the presentation and marketing are slick, there's no reason to spend a dime or an hour more than absolutely necessary on coherent design or working gameplay. Or put more simply, a dollar spent on marketing yields more sales than a dollar spent on functional code. I agree although I'd add that despite the general rot in the industry (take a look at the decline from ES1 to ES2 for instance) Civ 5 really did paint them into a corner with the 1UPT and Diplomacy implementations, they are quite bad even for the DGAF state that strategy games are in. It's ok after failing at Civ 5, Jon Shafer went on to fail with Offworld Trading Company (boring, dull), and now after two underwhelming designs has been hired by Paradox to keep being awesome
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Aug 16, 2017 23:30
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Civ 5's diplomacy, with its gorgeously rendered and conscientiously voiced leader screens, reminds me of a quote about Star Wars Episode 1 that I read a long time ago: "It's very, very pretty. That doesn't make it good, though, only pretty."
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Aug 16, 2017 23:33
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Ham Sandwiches posted:It's ok after failing at Civ 5, Jon Shafer went on to fail with Offworld Trading Company (boring, dull), and now after two underwhelming designs has been hired by Paradox to keep being awesome Don't forget the crowdfunded game he got $100K for 4.5 years ago, which is totally still in development, I swear
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Aug 16, 2017 23:42
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Eric the Mauve posted:Civ 5's diplomacy, with its gorgeously rendered and conscientiously voiced leader screens, reminds me of a quote about Star Wars Episode 1 that I read a long time ago: "It's very, very pretty. That doesn't make it good, though, only pretty."
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Aug 17, 2017 00:39
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Ham Sandwiches posted:I agree although I'd add that despite the general rot in the industry (take a look at the decline from ES1 to ES2 for instance) Civ 5 really did paint them into a corner with the 1UPT and Diplomacy implementations, they are quite bad even for the DGAF state that strategy games are in. OWT has a fantastic soundtrack though, by......Christopher Tin, to bring things back around.  No seriously "Allegro for Hydroponic Systems" is a great track.
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Aug 17, 2017 00:55
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Doomstacks loving suck. 1UPT's problems and failures don't make doomstacks not suck.
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Aug 17, 2017 00:57
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Ham Sandwiches posted:1UPT worked ok in panzer general, and some people complained very very strongly about deathstacks in Civ4, and Renegade Designer Jon Shafer was convinced he had the SOLUTION to make the combat more tactical and fun.
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Aug 17, 2017 06:28
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Communist Walrus posted:Don't forget the crowdfunded game he got $100K for 4.5 years ago, which is totally still in development, I swear When I read your post, I realized I couldn't even remember the last time he did an update for At The Gates. I do remember watching the development videos and him several times decide to totally change some fundamental mechanic. Just looked it up, though, and his website still allows a pre-order (still with a Q1 2017 release date, no less). His Kickstarter originally had a June 2014 release date, though the latest update promised the pre-Alpha would be done by July 31st. Oh well. At least every other game I backed came through. Plus were probably more fun that ATG will wind up being (assuming it ever comes out). Now I think I'll go start a Civ IV game and
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Aug 17, 2017 07:09
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If the idea of Civ IV type doomstacks was invented today nobody would use it because it sucks. Mashing all your units into a single big doomstack is not a good design.
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Aug 17, 2017 07:23
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TjyvTompa posted:If the idea of Civ IV type doomstacks was invented today nobody would use it because it sucks. Mashing all your units into a single big doomstack is not a good design. Why?
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Aug 17, 2017 07:53
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Gort posted:Why? 
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Aug 17, 2017 08:53
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Gort posted:Why? Because it reduces combat to "whoever can pour the most dudes into a stack faster than the other guy wins" and at that point you might as well have the computer measure your own production against the enemy's production to determine the winner instantly. It was boring in civ IV, it is boring in stellaris now, and just because it's easier to program doesn't mean it's more fun to play with. You could design a 1UPT system that the AI understands and can use (as a matter of fact I've seen mods do it for Civ V and probably VI if the DLC patches would stop breaking them) but Firaxis' civilization department just doesn't seem to care enough to try. Off the top of my head, galactic civilizations has a system that's in between doomstacks and 1UPT in the sense that you can stack as many guys into a tile as you want, but how many of them can actually fight depends on your logistics technology. So if civ VI wanted to do that, you might be able to stack as many guys onto a tile as you want but the stack is wiped if the defenders are destroyed and only a portion of the stack, dependent on your culture level, can fight. Maybe even give defenders the advantage where they get 1 extra fighting defending unit compared to an attacker of the same culture level.
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Aug 17, 2017 09:51
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Deltasquid posted:Because it reduces combat to "whoever can pour the most dudes into a stack faster than the other guy wins" Yeah, this is highly inaccurate. There wouldn't be pages upon pages of strategy guides on how to wage war in Civ 4 if this was all there was.
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Aug 17, 2017 10:03
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ibntumart posted:On another note, I started up a 4 person PYDT game. The super secret cool password is levrealness. There's still an open slot in this, if someone wants to play a game where Domination victory is off (but you'll still probably find up fighting anyway because someone's more cultural than you and that can't stand).
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Aug 17, 2017 10:12
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Ham Sandwiches posted:It's ok after failing at Civ 5, Jon Shafer went on to fail with Offworld Trading Company (boring, dull), and now after two underwhelming designs has been hired by Paradox to keep being awesome Offworld Trading Company was made by Soren Johnson, the lead designer of Civ 4, not Shafer.
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Aug 17, 2017 10:23
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Gort posted:Yeah, this is highly inaccurate. There wouldn't be pages upon pages of strategy guides on how to wage war in Civ 4 if this was all there was. There exists guides on pretty much anything, I wouldn't use this as a metric on how good or not something is.
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Aug 17, 2017 11:01
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TjyvTompa posted:There exists guides on pretty much anything, I wouldn't use this as a metric on how good or not something is. If you play Civ 4 with a "whoever can pour the most dudes into a stack faster than the other guy wins" philosophy any half-decent player will chew you up and spit you out with pillage stacks, proper use of promotions, scouting, working with (and modifying) the terrain, good stack composition, use of spies to lower city defenses, collateral damage units, and so on and so on and so on. Civ 4 has the best AI of any Civ game when it comes to warfare, and there are some pretty good AI mods that make it even better at it (I remember "Better BAT AI" being pretty terrifying back in the day) Meanwhile Civ 5 and Civ 6 became "flood the map with the overpowered ranged units, watch the AI march up and down getting shot every turn, maybe include a melee unit to conquer cities, and laugh as air units break 1UPT into tiny pieces".
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Aug 17, 2017 11:21
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Sounds like a personnel problem, chief. 
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Aug 17, 2017 11:41
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Gort posted:If you play Civ 4 with a "whoever can pour the most dudes into a stack faster than the other guy wins" philosophy any half-decent player will chew you up and spit you out with pillage stacks, proper use of promotions, scouting, working with (and modifying) the terrain, good stack composition, use of spies to lower city defenses, collateral damage units, and so on and so on and so on. Civ 4 has the best AI of any Civ game when it comes to warfare, and there are some pretty good AI mods that make it even better at it (I remember "Better BAT AI" being pretty terrifying back in the day) Sounds like the problems are all in your head my friend.
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Aug 17, 2017 11:43
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In Civ 5+6, When an AI captures a couple of cities from another AI, it's over for that AI. You can't recover from such a loss. In Civ 4 I've seen AI's turn it all around and conquer the other one. I've been playing with the Revolution mod which makes this all even better. I've just seen the largest and most powerful empire of the world break up into a number of smaller kingdoms, and one of those kingdoms managed to conquer the empire from which they orignally sprouted. Sometimes, the rebels may keep their territory to become a new country and become friendly with their 'parent'. In time, they may send a few settlers out and become a major power themselves, even making the original empire their vassal! This is the reason that makes it hard to go back to Civ 6, although I really like the game. It's just becomes too predictable.
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Aug 17, 2017 12:12
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Speaking of AIs, are there any AI mods for Civ5 that don't demand you run Windows and are actually good? (I mean, yes, I could run Civ5 in VMWare Fusion, but I shouldn't have to.)
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Aug 17, 2017 12:27
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Aerdan posted:Speaking of AIs, are there any AI mods for Civ5 that don't demand you run Windows and are actually good? Not sure what makes a Civ 5 mod windows only (DLL files?) but the comments on this AI mod seem to indicate it works on macs: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=233424615 quote:Forlorn 28 Jul @ 11:28pm
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Aug 17, 2017 12:53
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TjyvTompa posted:Not sure what makes a Civ 5 mod windows only (DLL files?) but the comments on this AI mod seem to indicate it works on macs: I used this on linux for a time, it crashed some, so I gave up on it. For all I know, the only really good AI patch is the community one, which is windows only
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Aug 17, 2017 12:56
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Yea, every time I get the gumption to actually mod Civ, I find that everything is windows-only, and is never advertised as such since it's kind of an assumption, eh?
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Aug 17, 2017 13:09
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