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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:I do like districts from a gameplay perspective but they do make the world seem rather small. In Civ5 and Civ4 it felt like there were miles of countryside between cities, now they practically overlap. This is good though? I love that cities start off as these islands in the wilderness and then slowly spread out and knit together into this continuous fabric of settlement. That's the story of humanity right there, that slowly intensifying domination of space. I love districts in particular for this, popping up as secondary urban centres as population densities increase and urbanisation takes off. It could do with being a tad less crowded, maybe, but not much more.
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Nov 1, 2018 15:37
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Autonomous Monster posted:This is good though? I love that cities start off as these islands in the wilderness and then slowly spread out and knit together into this continuous fabric of settlement. That's the story of humanity right there, that slowly intensifying domination of space. I love districts in particular for this, popping up as secondary urban centres as population densities increase and urbanisation takes off. It could do with being a tad less crowded, maybe, but not much more. Yeah, if anything the previous couple games went too far in the other direction and the map would end up too sparse. (really the whole series to some extent, but civ 1-2 let you pack cities in super densely which could kind of get the same urban build-up effect) I can see the argument that they phoned it in on some of the aesthetic considerations (although to some extent gameplay considerations need some degree of uniformity to make districts more readable) but personally I think even the halfassed aesthetic implementation of districts makes for cooler looking civs overall, and definitely makes laying them out more fun.
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Nov 1, 2018 15:51
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Scorching hot take, putting religion into Civ at all was a mistake
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Nov 1, 2018 16:30
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Eric the Mauve posted:Scorching hot take, putting religion into Civ at all was a mistake Eh, religion is such an omnipresent and important part of civilization and history that omitting it would be weird. Then again, small mercies that Beyond Earth did have a religion system at some point in development and was referred to in early game news, but was cut before the game was released.
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Nov 1, 2018 16:34
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Cythereal posted:Eh, religion is such an omnipresent and important part of civilization and history that omitting it would be weird. I agree that having religion in Civ VI was probably a better idea than not having it. I'm a bit irked that VI's religion was V's religion ++. Still better than IV's religion which was literally "everyone got the same happiness bonus/buildings but with different sound effects/names". The real issue was that it was one of a dozen things that makes VI really feel like "Civilization 5 and 1/2" BE religion was probably was a precursor to the Affinity system. Speaking of Affinity system, dear one other person who kinda-sorta liked BE: please tell me I'm not the only one who's frustrated that they smeared the Affinity-giving techs all over the tech web in the expansion. In the base game I could go 90% whatever affinity I wanted, in the expansion the stuff is so jumbled up I'd end up a mix of everything no matter what I did. "Here we put in hybrid stuff so now we're gonna force you to be a hybrid mish-mash no matter what!"
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Nov 1, 2018 16:44
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Alkydere posted:BE religion was probably was a precursor to the Affinity system. Speaking of Affinity system, dear one other person who kinda-sorta liked BE: please tell me I'm not the only one who's frustrated that they smeared the Affinity-giving techs all over the tech web in the expansion. In the base game I could go 90% whatever affinity I wanted, in the expansion the stuff is so jumbled up I'd end up a mix of everything no matter what I did. "Here we put in hybrid stuff so now we're gonna force you to be a hybrid mish-mash no matter what!" If you read early descriptions of factions in BE, it sounds like rather than each sponsor having a special ability, it was going to be a SMAC-style +/- attribute system. For example, the first description of PAC was that they were good at research, industry, and population growth, but bad at economy, religion, and diplomacy. I'm wondering if a social engineering system was going to be a part of that. And yeah, I feel that RT's rejiggering of affinity in the tech web diluted what your choice of affinity meant. There aren't even hybrid versions of submarines or aircraft, and from the sheer number of affinity units I always end up with at least some stuff from affinities I don't want. The hybrid affinities also lack any flavor or story impact, in my opinion. I almost always end up picking up some levels in Harmony these days simply because all the passive tile yield improvements are slapped onto Harmony, and I always end up with some amount of Supremacy because Master Control is just that good. CBERT has a lot of good ideas, and a lot of wasted potential. It's less than the sum of its parts, and I think most of its issues could have been fixed. But Firaxis clearly had little interest in doing so, and now the game has been abandoned.
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Nov 1, 2018 16:52
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Civ IV's religion, and religious motivations for wars, is by far the best implementation, though I do really like the pantheon part of VI -- it's more of a "spirituality culture" representing the role of faith in early civilizations. If it were up to me, it would be pantheon and then no further bonuses, as in Civ IV.
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Nov 1, 2018 16:58
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The Harmony/Supremacy floating brain flying aircraft-carrier is at least amazing. I think the best time I had with BE was vanilla + the SMAX factions mod that gave you a bunch of +/- bonuses/maluses. Every now and then I look through the workshop to see if there's anything like that for Rising Tide, or something that cleans up the Affinity gain but instead it's just nothing but "half priced units" and anime girl factions. At least the art designs were nice (except the UI: whoever thought "light grey text on dark gray backgrounds" was a good idea should have their kneecaps smashed). There's something cool about taming a blue alien landscape with human cities and farms.
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Nov 1, 2018 17:02
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Alkydere posted:At least the art designs were nice (except the UI: whoever thought "light grey text on dark gray backgrounds" was a good idea should have their kneecaps smashed). There's something cool about taming a blue alien landscape with human cities and farms. This remains one of my bigger complains about BE, to be honest. These alien worlds just aren't alien enough. Fungal's alright, and frigid and primordial were good steps, but I never play on lush or arid. I wanted weirder worlds, maybe worlds that would seriously change how the game plays out. The worst part is, Firaxis devs did mention in one interview that in earlier, private builds of the game they did have much weirder environments, but testers hated them because they couldn't immediately discern at a glance what kind of terrain some tiles were.
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Nov 1, 2018 17:13
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Cythereal posted:This remains one of my bigger complains about BE, to be honest. These alien worlds just aren't alien enough. Fungal's alright, and frigid and primordial were good steps, but I never play on lush or arid. I wanted weirder worlds, maybe worlds that would seriously change how the game plays out. Which is weird, considering how samey two of the three tilesets are. Distinguishing between flat plains, grasslands and deserts is a pain the purple and arid tilesets.
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Nov 1, 2018 17:16
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Civ isn't a history simulator. It's a game. A game that already has (and has had, since the beginning) several interlocking systems, and every game in the series has added more. Religion as yet another system the player has to keep track of makes the game more complex while adding nothing the player can't get from the existing systems. Certainly it doesn't have to be botched so badly it's an active nuisance to the player, as in V and VI. Religion as an extension of diplomacy as in IV wasn't that bad. But the game wouldn't be worse off without it, and thus is better off without it, because unless is good and complexity is bad, unless the added complexity pays for itself twice over in fun. IV is probably the best game in the series, but in a lot of ways that's despite its complexity, not because of it. Yes I know this is the exact wrong internet forum to be posting such an opinion 
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Nov 1, 2018 17:50
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Eric the Mauve posted:Civ isn't a history simulator. It's a game. This is a poor defensive position and a false dichotomy. Something can model history and be a game simultaneously. Religion motivated conflict for centuries and provided Civ IV players with interesting game decisions.
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Nov 1, 2018 18:06
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homullus posted:This is a poor defensive position and a false dichotomy. Something can model history and be a game simultaneously. Religion motivated conflict for centuries and provided Civ IV players with interesting game decisions. Emphasis on "Civ IV players." Making religions purely an extension of civs in 5/6 was a terrible idea. Religion is a zero-sum game now so if you have a religion there's no reason to tolerate other religions in your territory because they're actively hurting you and if you don't have a religion there's no reason to care about other religions in your territory because the religious buildings are barely worth building.
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Nov 1, 2018 18:18
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The biggest aesthetic/gameplay gripe of mine in V and VI is the fugly terra nullius everywhere that persists all the way through the game. I would love a mechanic that complements border-popping, by allowing civs mid-game to arbitrarily claim territory based on geographic or economic factors, like maybe America gets a Louisiana Purchase-style mass tile buy, or Chile can grab all mountain ranges partly in its territory, or something. You've already passed the semi-challenging part of border popping at that point. VI even already makes a distinction between hard and dotted borders in the early game, why not take that and apply it to claimed lands? You could even go so far as to have a Sykes-Picot Agreement style tech in the late game that would allow you to only cede parts of a territory back at the end of the war. Like if you want Toronto's luxes, you conquer it, and then cede back the city tile at the end of the war for reduced penalty while still getting the lux.
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Nov 1, 2018 18:20
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Straight White Shark posted:Emphasis on "Civ IV players." yeah i liked how religions were just always useful in 4. it was to your advantage to keep foreign ones out early because of the economic boost they brought to the holy city, but later in the game that bonus is fairly small compared to the rest of an empire and it was to your advantage to bring in as many as you could as soon as you hit free religion/liberalism. even then it wasn't like a bad thing to adopt someone else's religion, because +1~2  in every city is loving massive. not to mention the diplo bonus, which ranges from sizable to astronomicalbut in civ 5 and 6, it's just this constant, annoying micromanagement war against an opponent who can easily outproduce your faith due to AI bonuses, and AIs that have no sense of maintaining promises because of the chaos track.
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Nov 1, 2018 19:39
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homullus posted:This is a poor defensive position and a false dichotomy. Something can model history and be a game simultaneously. Religion motivated conflict for centuries and provided Civ IV players with interesting game decisions. I'd argue it never intended to be a history simulator, just a history themed computerized board game. Its like complaining about how in the Risk board game, Brazil can attack Morocco, but can't attack New York, which doesn't make sense because they either have boats and planes or they don't. It's an arbitrary decision made for game design/balance, it doesn't matter if it makes logical sense in some sort of role playing scenario.. If Civ designers decide that 'Grassland' is worth 2 food and `Plains` is worth 1 food, it doesn't need to be out of some historical study that shows Grassland farms produce 2x as much food, it can just be for the sake of map variety and game balance.
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Nov 1, 2018 19:59
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Pakistani Brad Pitt posted:I'd argue it never intended to be a history simulator, just a history themed computerized board game. ...yes? Were you inferring I thought everything in Civilization: Clearly A Computer Game was data-driven realism? I am saying that its being a game does not preclude modeling history.
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Nov 1, 2018 20:22
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Cynic Jester posted:Which is weird, considering how samey two of the three tilesets are. Distinguishing between flat plains, grasslands and deserts is a pain the purple and arid tilesets. I actually had no real problem with the Blue/Fungal tileset, but maybe because it was my favorite. The Arid one was okay, Lush was pretty but not terribly alien. Primordial (red) was just cool looking. For me the worst tileset was the ice planet they added in Rising Tide. Not only does it have the worst planet mystery (The alien drills become geothermal vents but without the massive energy value that made vents so tasty) but everything was just ice everywhere.
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Nov 1, 2018 20:31
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The devs get off track, and wind up making their game worse, when they begin to think modeling history is as important as being a fun game. They are selling a game, part of its appeal is being inspired by history, but a lot of the bad decisions that have gotten the franchise off track boil down to nobody at Firaxis asking: "If we add this feature, will it make the game more fun?"
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Nov 1, 2018 20:32
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Eric the Mauve posted:The devs get off track, and wind up making their game worse, when they begin to think modeling history is as important as being a fun game. They are selling a game, part of its appeal is being inspired by history, but a lot of the bad decisions that have gotten the franchise off track boil down to nobody at Firaxis asking: "If we add this feature, will it make the game more fun?" Yes, good. I totally agree. This is why we do not and should not spend almost the whole game with stone tools.
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Nov 1, 2018 20:35
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Historically speaking religions weren't an a la carte menu of random traits that people were constantly spawning faith leaders by government fiat to spread across the world for sweet tithe gold. CIV IV's religion felt much truer to religion's place in history than it does in civ 5 or 6
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Nov 1, 2018 21:33
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Sedge and Bee posted:Historically speaking religions weren't an a la carte menu of random traits that people were constantly spawning faith leaders by government fiat to spread across the world for sweet tithe gold. CIV IV's religion felt much truer to religion's place in history than it does in civ 5 or 6 On one hand I can kinda see that point, they were just the thing you spread and got bonuses from, on the other hand IV's religions were just so...boring since they were all the same. It was literally just a marker and you mashed the hindu marker against the judaism one. Civ V's and VI's religion feels better as a *game system* where you create your own religion, but it feels nowhere near as good for a roleplay system where you end up with Orthodox Wats, or Taoist Cathedrals or Apostles spreading the good word of "Firehouse Subs". There's just no real limit to how you can mix and match this stuff and it loses a lot of its uniqueness. The pantheon feels okay since its generally you reacting to the area around your city and 1-2 starting expansions, sort of an outgrowth of your people's surroundings, but after that it doesn't quite have the same feel. It would honestly feel a lot better if say you had to meet certain prerequisites to unlock certain beliefs for later. Of course that sort of system would work best if religion was a bigger thing later into the game. The issue is if you don't force the player to make a concrete choice (or at least work to unlock the choices) the player will figure out the 2-3 ideal setups and use them every time. It's the same issue the policy cards have: they're overly granular and the choices either mean too little to bother with or too much to use anything else. Also a lot of the issue is that Firaxis is (understandably) unwilling to just go "this religion gives A, B, C, this one D, E, F and this one gives G, H, I bonuses". That sort of thinking could lead to some really unintentionally offensive stuff and pigeonholes religions.
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Nov 2, 2018 04:45
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Alkydere posted:Also a lot of the issue is that Firaxis is (understandably) unwilling to just go "this religion gives A, B, C, this one D, E, F and this one gives G, H, I bonuses". That sort of thinking could lead to some really unintentionally offensive stuff and pigeonholes religions. Imagine all the fun and constructive mods the community would make for a 'religions have specific bonuses/maluses' system! 
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Nov 2, 2018 06:27
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Alkydere posted:On one hand I can kinda see that point, they were just the thing you spread and got bonuses from, on the other hand IV's religions were just so...boring since they were all the same. It was literally just a marker and you mashed the hindu marker against the judaism one. There was definitely room to experiment and improve, but I can't overstate how much I hate theological combat in Civ VI. It's absurd, and the religious victory is one I've done only once on warlord to get the achievement because i hate it so much. Most other games I don't even bother fighting back the tide of religion, I just let one empire convert mine and drop the nukes of they get close to a religious victory. But even in practice the AI barely manages to since 2 civs fighting against each other religiously will basically always stalemate
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Nov 2, 2018 06:35
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General Battuta posted:Imagine all the fun and constructive mods the community would make for a 'religions have specific bonuses/maluses' system! Hence why it's understandable they're unwilling to do that. Because they already know that the first mod uploaded/updated on the workshop after every expansion/update will be Hitler. Giving the playerbase the framework to assign a bonus/malus system to specific religions is like opening Pandora's box of Racism.
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Nov 2, 2018 10:30
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General Battuta posted:Imagine all the fun and constructive mods the community would make for a 'religions have specific bonuses/maluses' system! every single religion would have tech -90% as a baseline no doubt
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Nov 2, 2018 11:11
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MarquiseMindfang posted:every single religion would have tech -90% as a baseline no doubt Except for the anime ones which have +200% [everything] because anime. And [my anime] is the bestest and most awesomest unlike [other anime] so it has the bestest perks!
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Nov 2, 2018 11:18
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Sedge and Bee posted:Historically speaking religions weren't an a la carte menu of random traits that people were constantly spawning faith leaders by government fiat to spread across the world for sweet tithe gold. CIV IV's religion felt much truer to religion's place in history than it does in civ 5 or 6 If you want to get really  about it you could totally argue that religions are simply institutions of man and as such were designed exactly by men in power cherry picking "ideals" to spread across the world for their own gold and power/influence gain.
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Nov 2, 2018 14:06
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Alkydere posted:On one hand I can kinda see that point, they were just the thing you spread and got bonuses from, on the other hand IV's religions were just so...boring since they were all the same. It was literally just a marker and you mashed the hindu marker against the judaism one. The generic bonuses actually worked a lot better as a game system. When you have bonuses tailored to you then foreign religions go from being a nuisance to being intolerable because they'll override your hand-picked bonuses with some other schmuck's bonuses that you don't care about. So instead of a bunch of religions spreading out and overlapping now you have Rome with Roman religion and China with Chinese religion and Germany with German religion, and they're all doing their best to make sure it stays that way. Then for all intents and purposes they're just a way of customizing your civ with extra civ-specific bonuses, except with a huge extra micromanagement layer thrown in that takes a lot of work but doesn't actually change all that much.
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Nov 2, 2018 15:06
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It's weird that religion and culture, and religion and diplomacy, are not more closely connected.
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Nov 2, 2018 15:10
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Straight White Shark posted:So instead of a bunch of religions spreading out and overlapping now you have Rome with Roman religion and China with Chinese religion and Germany with German religion, and they're all doing their best to make sure it stays that way. religioushistory.txt?
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Nov 2, 2018 15:18
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Byzantine posted:religioushistory.txt? Not really, no.
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Nov 2, 2018 15:44
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if the world worked like Civ 5/6 religion Italy, Israel, Saudi Arabia, China, and India would all consider foreign missionaries an act of war (granted, a couple of them more or less do) and the rest of the world wouldn't give a poo poo as they switch back and forth between religions every couple generations
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Nov 2, 2018 15:48
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Considering the missionaries would be directly sponsored and controlled by the states in a deliberate attempt to destroy the other faiths it would be correct to call it an act of war I think.  Fhqwhgads posted:If you want to get really Poil fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Nov 2, 2018 |
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Nov 2, 2018 16:57
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the point is that religions don't map 1:1 with the civilizations/cultures that promote them, unless you literally divide the world up into "Christian Civilization", "Islamic Civlization", etc. At which point (other than the fact that you should stop following Breitbart/Infowars) what the gently caress is the point of having religion as a separate entity from civilizations?
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Nov 2, 2018 17:20
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Sedge and Bee posted:There was definitely room to experiment and improve, but I can't overstate how much I hate theological combat in Civ VI. It's absurd, and the religious victory is one I've done only once on warlord to get the achievement because i hate it so much. Most other games I don't even bother fighting back the tide of religion, I just let one empire convert mine and drop the nukes of they get close to a religious victory. But even in practice the AI barely manages to since 2 civs fighting against each other religiously will basically always stalemate I've done religious victory against real living human beings. Maybe give that a shot?
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Nov 2, 2018 17:43
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Alkydere posted:Hence why it's understandable they're unwilling to do that. Because they already know that the first mod uploaded/updated on the workshop after every expansion/update will be Hitler. That is hardly the reason they wouldn't do it. It's a bad idea to make the religions different in the game world because of the "baggage" associated with Religion in the real world. There exist plenty of mods that change the bonuses associated with different religions, and no one but people looking to be offended should care. But as a developer if you want a mechanic that gives different bonuses based on the passive and active spread of some kind of phenomenon, Civ4 has that too, it's called corporations. ate shit on live tv fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Nov 2, 2018 |
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Nov 2, 2018 18:28
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:But as a developer if you want a mechanic that gives different bonuses based on the passive and active spread of some kind of phenomenon, Civ4 has that too, it's called corporations. True but corporations in Civ 4 were a load of bullshit. Straight White Shark posted:the point is that religions don't map 1:1 with the civilizations/cultures that promote them, unless you literally divide the world up into "Christian Civilization", "Islamic Civlization", etc. At which point (other than the fact that you should stop following Breitbart/Infowars) what the gently caress is the point of having religion as a separate entity from civilizations? There has never been a useful (that is, adding more fun than it subtracts) point in having religion as a separate entity from culture.
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Nov 2, 2018 18:31
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Eric the Mauve posted:True but corporations in Civ 4 were a load of bullshit. They were a pretty cool mechanic for the end-game imo. Plus you had a lot of weapons to fight agains them if you wanted to. Really their only problem was that they weren't balanced against each other so Sid's Sushi was pretty much always the best choice, but that is part of the fun of end-game mechanics, when you are ahead steam-rolling should be encouraged, i.e. it's time for the game to end. So unless someone is close enough to stop you quickly, eventually they shouldn't be able to.
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Nov 2, 2018 18:37
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corps were a horrible micromanagement hassle and should be panned for that alone
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