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Author Topic: Civilization V  (Read 70631 times)

BurnedToast

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #495 on: December 22, 2013, 06:33:29 pm »

Hmm. I -thought- I bought gold, but apparently not. It's just gods and kings also.

Welp, it works well enough on my lappies intel core i5 with the graphics set low.

I have enjoyed an hour session so far. The tech tree seems quite reduced to Civ four, but the choice in various civilization leaders was reasonable. I guess this is because of the various DLC stuff I got with this version.

Also, the UI of course is very nice and polished.

Brave new world was released after gold edition, so it's not in it.

Gold edition is everything except brave new world.

Edit: I just re-read my previous post and realized it's very misleading, sorry, I meant if you have gold edition you only have G+K, not BNW. That's what I get for making posts at 5 am.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2013, 06:45:28 pm by BurnedToast »
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Aoi

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #496 on: December 22, 2013, 10:51:51 pm »

I just started playing this recently courtesy of a giveaway from GMG.

Is my management strange, or does it really seem to try and punish you for having large amounts of cities? I started having unmanageable unhappiness around 15 cities (that I constructed). Related to that, does anybody else find city conquest really difficult now, with their passive defenses and bombardment? (Point of reference, I'm coming from the 256-color Civ and SMAC as my last Civ experiences.)
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buckets

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #497 on: December 22, 2013, 11:15:31 pm »

Hmm. I -thought- I bought gold, but apparently not. It's just gods and kings also.

Welp, it works well enough on my lappies intel core i5 with the graphics set low.

I have enjoyed an hour session so far. The tech tree seems quite reduced to Civ four, but the choice in various civilization leaders was reasonable. I guess this is because of the various DLC stuff I got with this version.

Also, the UI of course is very nice and polished.

Brave new world was released after gold edition, so it's not in it.

Gold edition is everything except brave new world.

Edit: I just re-read my previous post and realized it's very misleading, sorry, I meant if you have gold edition you only have G+K, not BNW. That's what I get for making posts at 5 am.

Arg crap! I wouldn't have bought the gold edition if I knew that. Does anyone know how the steam refunds thing works?
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WealthyRadish

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #498 on: December 23, 2013, 12:19:30 am »

Arg crap! I wouldn't have bought the gold edition if I knew that. Does anyone know how the steam refunds thing works?

My understanding of it is that Steam offers one refund per account, ever (unless it's a preorder before release), and that you have to do it through their support system since they officially don't give any.


I think I've found what has really bothered me about Civ V. Imagine that every line of text and graphic in Civ V was changed to instead make the game a coral reef simulator, with every mechanic identical. The map would be a coastal seabed, with different local properties like sunlight and rocky areas, and everything in the game would be renamed and remodeled to accommodate this. You'd build up your reef using a species of coral with some slight differences from the other species, colonize new reefs, inhabit your reefs with fish that fill specific niches and populate the surrounding seabed, and take over other reefs using reproductive polyps or something (I guess the analogy fails a bit at combat). It could be exactly the same in every regard, but with coral instead of civilizations.

What genre would people put this game in? It definitely wouldn't be grand strategy, since people would reason that the scope is too narrow and most gameplay areas too basic. I don't think very many people would play it, maybe if it could run on a mobile device. So what makes Civ V different? That's what bothers me, really, that it's been abstracted and simplified to the point where the game's subject matter doesn't make any difference. It's like it's pretending to be something it's not, since it could just as well be a coral simulator as the story of every nation on the planet from the birth of civilization into the future.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2013, 12:29:03 am by UrbanGiraffe »
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Thexor

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #499 on: December 23, 2013, 01:23:33 am »

Civilization, as a series, has never attempted to realistically simulate global conflict. 'Grand strategy' has never been applicable, and that's hardly a new change in Civ 5.

Civilization is a perfect example of the 4X genre - explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. It's about exploring an unknown world, expanding your empire across this world, exploiting whatever resources you find, and using those resources to crush your opposition. If you're looking for a game that accurately simulates real-world conflict, I'm sorry, but you picked the wrong title. Civilization has always been about a warmongering George Washington, a peaceful Ramses, and a nuke-happy Gandhi squaring off for victory in a randomly-generated planet.
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Aoi

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #500 on: December 23, 2013, 03:30:52 am »

I think I've found what has really bothered me about Civ V. Imagine that every line of text and graphic in Civ V was changed to instead make the game a coral reef simulator, with every mechanic identical. The map would be a coastal seabed, with different local properties like sunlight and rocky areas, and everything in the game would be renamed and remodeled to accommodate this. You'd build up your reef using a species of coral with some slight differences from the other species, colonize new reefs, inhabit your reefs with fish that fill specific niches and populate the surrounding seabed, and take over other reefs using reproductive polyps or something (I guess the analogy fails a bit at combat). It could be exactly the same in every regard, but with coral instead of civilizations.

...

...

Are you launching a Kickstarter anytime soon?
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Puzzlemaker

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #501 on: December 23, 2013, 02:23:07 pm »

One big thing that bothers me about Civilization is how Western a lot of the values are...  Let me explain.

They seem to basically treat the idea of Barbarians as non-humans.  You have the Civilizations, you have Barbarians, and you have city states.  There are clear lines drawn between them.  It makes sense as far as gameplay goes, but it really doesn't seem right, especially since many of the civilizations that exist in game basically started as "Barbarians".  I mean, look at the mongols.  No offense to them, but they started as a group of nomadic horsemen.

It also seems strange how culture works, the lines are set so strongly.  There is this culture, then there is this culture, and there are no grey areas.  I mean, again, in terms of gameplay it makes sense, but it bothers me.  I wanted to make a mod that changes how it all works.  I haven't thought of all of the details yet, but here is a general idea.

The mod would start you as a barbarian unit without any technology researched (Including agriculture).  You can create a camp (AKA a barbarian camp).  It would be treated as a pseudo-city, letting you build and do things in it like a normal city.  It would basically be the same as a barbarian encampment, letting you build barbarian units, etc.  ALL barbarian camps would follow the same logic, so all the barbarian encampments that start have the ability to potentially become a civilization.

To form a civilization you need to generate culture.  Once you generate enough culture points you can start a culture (Same as starting a religion).  You choose what culture you want (Basically this is when you choose the Civ you want to play as).  This acts as a religion, and it can spread to neighboring cities or camps.  A camp/city that becomes mostly your culture is possible to take over without inflicting as many unhappiness penalties.  It should even be possible to take them over through peaceful means, if your particular culture is omnipresent.  I was also thinking of allowing peaceful annexation through a "Great Leader" system which would replace Great Generals (Think Ghengis Khan who united the mongols).

Basically it would feel more like a living, breathing world.  Instead of you being a shining beacon of civilization in a world of barbarians, it would feel more like just one more group of humans trying to eke out their existence, surrounded by other tribes trying to do the same.

Thoughts?
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IronyOwl

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #502 on: December 23, 2013, 02:59:51 pm »

I just started playing this recently courtesy of a giveaway from GMG.

Is my management strange, or does it really seem to try and punish you for having large amounts of cities? I started having unmanageable unhappiness around 15 cities (that I constructed). Related to that, does anybody else find city conquest really difficult now, with their passive defenses and bombardment? (Point of reference, I'm coming from the 256-color Civ and SMAC as my last Civ experiences.)
As far as I'm aware, they've been trying to get away from the "More Cities = Better" mechanic for most of the series' history. Civ 5 does an admirable job of this; I routinely play with just one city, which still isn't ideal (except maybe if you're pushing a culture victory), but is far more feasible than in any previous iteration.

So yes, the game's punishing you for having a ton of cities. You can do it, but you'll want to think about what each city costs and gains you much more than in previous games, where "there's space for it" was a pretty damned good reason.


Conquest is definitely harder now, though I consider that a good thing. It's also harder in different ways than the old Civ/SMAC kamikaze superstack shenanigans, where if they were ahead of you defensively you just had to throw ten of your twenty units at their walled city until it fell. The fact that losing an engagement doesn't destroy your unit makes sieges a lot more feasible, and even if you "lose" you can gain experience out of it provided they don't die.


I think I've found what has really bothered me about Civ V. Imagine that every line of text and graphic in Civ V was changed to instead make the game a coral reef simulator, with every mechanic identical. The map would be a coastal seabed, with different local properties like sunlight and rocky areas, and everything in the game would be renamed and remodeled to accommodate this. You'd build up your reef using a species of coral with some slight differences from the other species, colonize new reefs, inhabit your reefs with fish that fill specific niches and populate the surrounding seabed, and take over other reefs using reproductive polyps or something (I guess the analogy fails a bit at combat). It could be exactly the same in every regard, but with coral instead of civilizations.

What genre would people put this game in? It definitely wouldn't be grand strategy, since people would reason that the scope is too narrow and most gameplay areas too basic. I don't think very many people would play it, maybe if it could run on a mobile device. So what makes Civ V different? That's what bothers me, really, that it's been abstracted and simplified to the point where the game's subject matter doesn't make any difference. It's like it's pretending to be something it's not, since it could just as well be a coral simulator as the story of every nation on the planet from the birth of civilization into the future.
I don't think this is a problem that's unique to Civ V. Anything can be reskinned as something else and work to some extent; is there something specific about Civ V that's uniquely malleable or bland to you?

I think it'd be simulation/empire building/4X just like it is now. I don't see why nobody would play it; probably less people would play it, but I think you'd still have a lot of people really enjoying that empire-building game where you play as coral expanding against other coral.


One big thing that bothers me about Civilization is how Western a lot of the values are...  Let me explain.

They seem to basically treat the idea of Barbarians as non-humans.  You have the Civilizations, you have Barbarians, and you have city states.  There are clear lines drawn between them.  It makes sense as far as gameplay goes, but it really doesn't seem right, especially since many of the civilizations that exist in game basically started as "Barbarians".  I mean, look at the mongols.  No offense to them, but they started as a group of nomadic horsemen.

It also seems strange how culture works, the lines are set so strongly.  There is this culture, then there is this culture, and there are no grey areas.  I mean, again, in terms of gameplay it makes sense, but it bothers me.  I wanted to make a mod that changes how it all works.  I haven't thought of all of the details yet, but here is a general idea.

The mod would start you as a barbarian unit without any technology researched (Including agriculture).  You can create a camp (AKA a barbarian camp).  It would be treated as a pseudo-city, letting you build and do things in it like a normal city.  It would basically be the same as a barbarian encampment, letting you build barbarian units, etc.  ALL barbarian camps would follow the same logic, so all the barbarian encampments that start have the ability to potentially become a civilization.

To form a civilization you need to generate culture.  Once you generate enough culture points you can start a culture (Same as starting a religion).  You choose what culture you want (Basically this is when you choose the Civ you want to play as).  This acts as a religion, and it can spread to neighboring cities or camps.  A camp/city that becomes mostly your culture is possible to take over without inflicting as many unhappiness penalties.  It should even be possible to take them over through peaceful means, if your particular culture is omnipresent.  I was also thinking of allowing peaceful annexation through a "Great Leader" system which would replace Great Generals (Think Ghengis Khan who united the mongols).

Basically it would feel more like a living, breathing world.  Instead of you being a shining beacon of civilization in a world of barbarians, it would feel more like just one more group of humans trying to eke out their existence, surrounded by other tribes trying to do the same.

Thoughts?
Seems kind of complex and wonky just to satisfy some principles.

For instance, you say each civilization starts off as a barbarian camp, but that to become a civilization you need to generate culture. But since you presumably can't do anything as a barbarian camp, there's either just this sort of zerg-rush phase where you can try to wipe out your neighbors by being a better barbarian than them, or it's just a sort of dead zone where all you can/want to do is sit there and generate culture so you can actually play the game.

Then there's the effect on later gameplay, which is... basically that if you leave a barbarian camp for too long, it becomes a civilization. Okay... so uninhabited places get colonized pretty quickly by other civs, and... well, barbarians just kind of run themselves to extinction, don't they? Since anyplace that can sustain barbarians eventually becomes its own non-barbarian civ that then prevents more barbarians?

Culture could be kind of more interesting, but as you point out, it's basically just a cross between current culture and current religion. I'm all for tracking cultural trends and ethnicities and religions and philosophies and favored god worship and food sources and all manner of mostly irrelevant trivia, but I assume I'm in the minority and as far as I can tell that's mostly what this would fall under.


Have you tried packing more players on the map? If you don't like the distinction between barbarians, city states, and civs, you could try just removing the first two and increasing the latter one. I've tried "bickering nobles" scenarios before where I'd pack a map with so many players that everyone could only really have one or two cities.
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Puzzlemaker

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #503 on: December 23, 2013, 04:43:51 pm »

Quote
For instance, you say each civilization starts off as a barbarian camp, but that to become a civilization you need to generate culture. But since you presumably can't do anything as a barbarian camp, there's either just this sort of zerg-rush phase where you can try to wipe out your neighbors by being a better barbarian than them, or it's just a sort of dead zone where all you can/want to do is sit there and generate culture so you can actually play the game.

Yes, I didn't cover the early game very well.  One of the things that bothers me about the Civ5 (With expansions) is how much of the basic gameplay is dependent on technology.  They act like spies didn't exist until the industrial era, for example.

Early game is basically kind of boring.  You fight barbarians, you expand, and you scout.  I feel like you should have spies and more diplomacy early game, but with an exception:  You can only send spies and have diplomatic relations with your closest neighbors.  As your technology increases, your ability to have relationships with countries farther away also increases.

So, think your "Bickering nobles" scenario, but as time passes you zoom out and out.  You start as one tribe among many, and you annex or ally with your neighboring tribes.  You grow, and then you bump up against neighbors who have also been growing and annexing.  You fight them, and grow more.  It's like those games where you start as a fish and have to eat smaller fish to survive and dodge bigger fish.  I feel like it would make the early game a lot more interesting.

Quote
basically that if you leave a barbarian camp for too long, it becomes a civilization. Okay... so uninhabited places get colonized pretty quickly by other civs, and... well, barbarians just kind of run themselves to extinction, don't they? Since anyplace that can sustain barbarians eventually becomes its own non-barbarian civ that then prevents more barbarians?

Well, yeah.  That's kind of what happened in real life.  It's not like the America's were just empty. 

I forgot to mention the international trade routes they added in the expansion.  Personally I don't like them, they feel really wonky, but they have a lot of potential.

I feel the city-state system should be replaced with the "International Trade Route" system, allowing the trade routes to also trade food, culture and faith.  Also drastically increase the number of trade routes available, maybe based on the number of cities you have plus the technology you have researched. 

That way any "Barbarian" encampments have have advanced enough to become a civilization can trade with you, supplying food or culture based on the cities build just like a city-state would.
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scrdest

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #504 on: December 23, 2013, 05:07:27 pm »

I think Barbarians becoming (minor) civs was either included in Civ IV or at least modded in.


I think Barbarians should be treated as an abstraction, especially in Civ V which doesn't pretend to as much of a simulation as previous ones were. Barbarians are, broadly speaking, IMO assorted small-scale enemies of all kinds: minor underdeveloped tribes, rebels, bandits, deserters, separatists, terrorists, sub-nation state countries currently at war with you, etc.

I agree that spies should be included much earlier, particularly now that they are useful as Diplomats: giving civs a first spy at Classical at least would only make things more interesting. As-is, your spies are spread very thin, doubly so if you plan on having fun with World Congress.
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WealthyRadish

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #505 on: December 24, 2013, 03:03:05 am »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's worth noting that I don't think this is a problem with the game itself really, it's just that I had expectations of the game that were disappointed. The coral analogy was a way of explaining how I think most aspects of the game are generic in the extreme, since its mechanics are all shallow enough to be applied in any context. Coral reefs, truck driving management, flowery meadow conquest, anything would work, so them using a theme that has higher personal expectations for depth killed it for me.
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10ebbor10

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #506 on: December 24, 2013, 03:47:01 am »

I think Barbarians becoming (minor) civs was either included in Civ IV or at least modded in.
It's a mod, but it was easier to do so because barbarians had actual cities in civ IV
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BurnedToast

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #507 on: December 24, 2013, 06:03:41 am »

The thing that really grinds my gears about barbarians in civ5 is they keep up in tech with the highest(?) tech player, and they manage to build modern units somehow.

I'm sorry, but if your barbarian encampment is able to build battleships and modern armor, you're not barbarians anymore.
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forsaken1111

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #508 on: December 24, 2013, 07:27:32 am »

The thing that really grinds my gears about barbarians in civ5 is they keep up in tech with the highest(?) tech player, and they manage to build modern units somehow.

I'm sorry, but if your barbarian encampment is able to build battleships and modern armor, you're not barbarians anymore.
I think the term for 'barbarians' with modern weaponry is 'terrorists'
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Astral

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Re: Civilization V
« Reply #509 on: December 24, 2013, 02:41:19 pm »

I have friends who play this without any barbarians at all, which makes me kinda sad as it invalidates quite a few civilizations that revolve around capturing or bribing their units to get ahead.

I don't mind barbarians, myself. They add a little more conflict to the early game, forcing you to focus on something other than just building wonders and buildings until you hit another civilization. Never had much of a problem with them, myself, but generally I have a leading science quota compared to the rest of our players.
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