Please Pray for Wiglaf

[Wiglaf]

There is a contest where the best Gods and Kings review gets their money back for buying the game. Clearly this contest was designed to help the people who were cheated by this terrible excuse for an expansion back.

Noted child obsessed pervert OzzyKP, a Civ 5 and Gods and Kings apologist who is happy with his purchase of the expansion, did not get this memo and submitted a positive review. Having submitted a good faith review to the contest, I believe I am more deserving of my money back. Plomp disagrees and is openly supporting OzzyKP's review, which was bought and paid for by Firaxis and their resident landed alien virgin Ed Beach. Please support my review so that I can collect my money.

http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/1...Gods-and-Kings



EDIT: Robert Plomp has deleted my truthful review, which I have reposted below. I am considering legal action in small claims court

[Hauldren Collider]

How do we support your review? I can thank your post and reply with my approval.

[MRT144]

If you could somehow slip in your story of putting a condom on your dog that would elevate it to god king status.

[Wiglaf]

Done

[Asher]

Outstanding.

[Wiglaf]

I am well on my way to reclaiming the $25.19 stolen from me by the virgin Extra terrestrial Ed Beach. Thank you all

[DaShi]

This is why we need more "Thanks." I never have one when I need one.

[Krill]

Brilliant.

[Wiglaf]

Predictably, my review was deleted. I will repost it here in full

OzzyKP probably needs the $25.19 more anyway. Think of how many snickers bars for child seduction that buys.

Gods and Kings, hitherto 'GK,' is the first expansion to Jon Shafer's last act as a respected member of the PC videogame industry, known as Civilization 5. GK is a continuation of the trend of cashing in on a successful but highly flawed game by tacking on poorly integrated, barely thought-out game features that really should have been included originally, in working format.

I will break down my thoughts on the additions, the product of lead designer Ed Beach's wonderfully creative brain, which found a way to incorporate not one but two features from old civ games into this expansion pack.

The name: 'Gods' makes sense, but 'Kings' does not. Along with the fact multiplayer has been working about as well as my mail order $49.95 penis enlargement pills, this is a real bad start.

Please let me know if there is a contest where I can get my money back for those penis enlargement pills, thanks.

Boring, uneventful, nukeless espionage: The first thing I noticed is that all my spies have only first names, like Albert, or Alexa, or Fred. While I appreciate the need for secrecy, I do not appreciate feeling like I am sending my god damned pet goldfish off to spy on the enemy. These are professionals and they should be named as such.

Also, evidently the developers could not be bothered to have graphic artists contribute to this part of the game in any way. This expansion is so low budget they just added a couple of menus, and even the menus don't make sense. Espionage gets its own big button up top but religion, a more important game feature, does not. Okay.

The third thing I noticed is that there is almost no strategic depth to this addition. Much like the loss prevention department of a struggling department store, you only have three options: rig useless 'elections,' Steal tech/intrigue, or counter-intel. It goes without saying that if you are a big tech leader, then you just do counter-espionage and maybe influence a city state if you're bored. If you're way behind in tech, you steal tech. Pretty simple. If you simply must influence a city state, go for it, enjoy the thrill down your leg as you 'rig an election' to get a small influence boost over an unthinking, unfeeling dispenser of some faith/gold/food/military units. Whatever. If this excites you, get a girl friend.

Intrigue is the dumbest concept ever introduced in a Civ game because it's not even a coherently integrated game mechanic. For the love of God the developers couldn't implement the whole espionage system in MP because of this incoherence. The basic idea is that your spies in enemy Civs have a chance of learning of that civ's secret war plans, like a plan to sneak attack you or another Civ. Because Civ5 cannot read your mind, the AI can never get intrigue from you.

The developers could have easily remedied this inconsistency, say by requiring all players (including the human) 'draw war plans' 10 turns in advance of an invasion, but they opted to make it impossible for the AI to detect through espionage that you are plotting an invasion. The result is that you get intrigue to play with, and the AI does not. A serious mistake Plomp made was allowing me to edit this review post-publication, a privilege I will abuse here for the first time in this review by calling intrigue a very gay, and very stupid name for a very gay and very stupid mechanic.

Which would be upsetting except for the fact that, a good 80% of the time, your intel is simply that some other AI is plotting to sneak attack another AI, which functions like a positive diplo modifier for you when you share this information with the victim AI. I suppose you could be a douche and not share the intel if you want to hurt the other player, but since the AI rarely follows through on the one-sentence-long invasion plans you learn about through 'intrigue,' no one really cares.

They might as well have implemented a funnier/more risque/relevant gossip system instead of intrigue, where you can talk about the female civ leaders' performance in the sack. Come to think of it, male leaders are probably more firaxis' type --when you catch an enemy spy, their leader comes up and apologizes by doing the same animation he does when you eliminate him from the game. In the case of the Mayans, this means the leader immediately assumes the blowjob position.

For the record Firaxis I do not need a blowjob everytime I catch someone spying on me. Like I said, low budget. The best part is, if you tell him to stop spying on you after you ejaculate all over him, you still get a negative diplo hit for it. (If he gets caught again, you automatically get another free unwanted Mayan BJ and the opportunity to declare war on him for it, which at least approximates the casus belli system this game needs.)

Oh, and there are new espionage defense buildings like the Constabulatory (which is another name for a police station) and the police station (which is another name for a police station).

Tell me if this picture of Ed Beach isn't from a sex offender registry somewhere? I'd be shocked. http://www.boardgamers.org/wingm/beached.jpg

Customizable, nameable Religions: Finally a way to spread HIV throughout my civilization, just like Reagan.

Unlike espionage, it seems the developers got lucky and found some buried art assets of missionaries and inquisitors to use with this feature. They must have found these files and gotten excited, which was a mistake because the missionaries and inquisitors look every bit like the terrible vanilla-reject 3D models they are.

Basically, civs race to found a limited number of religions, which they can customize with a list of exclusive bonuses that no other religion can later claim. Most of these bonuses will appeal to effete players, like the +1 happiness for being near rivers. I founded racism, which provides a +1 happiness or culture or something for every jungle tile near a city, for obvious reasons, as well as +2 gold for every city following the religion, as well as something else, like more faith points or something useless.

If you found a religion, it is always in your interest to spread it far and wide, being cognizant of the diplo hit you will get if you spread a religion into a civ that has its own religion. It might also be wise to place cities to take advantage of bonuses you may have selected. By 1400 AD, Racism was making me an outrageous amount of gold (something like 40% of my total income), allowing me to buy city states and therefore the game through diplomatic victory.

If you don't found a religion, you are either slow or an idiot, but basically, you get to ignore this entire mechanic. I guess it might be a bad thing if another powerful civ spreads its religion in your cities, but not really, since you still get some of the bonuses from that. Personally, I think it's offensive to think religion actually produces tangible benefits in the game world, since obviously religion only provides these benefits in the afterlife (otherwise poor homeless black people would not be so damn Baptist).

I will again use my editing privileges to note that there is no gay marriage World Wonder in this game, which I can only assume is the case because the game was made by Orthodox Jews.

Speaking of, I still think Jews should be a new civilization, which the Hollywood Unique ability providing +10 happinesss per theater. You may say this is overpowered but that is what Hitler is for, and it goes without saying what his unique ability would be.

AI: It was very clear I was buying up every city state (literally every one) and beelining to Globalization to build the UN. No Civ stopped this, told me to stop, attacked my capital, anything. Once I built the UN, all the city states and three civs voted for me, including Catherine, who was way ahead of me by score. I cannot understand why an AI that wants to win the game would do nothing at the strategic level to stop someone else's obvious attempt to win, and then on top of that, vote voluntarily to lose the game. It didn't matter what the civs did, since buying the city states up/patronage/Greece made it a guarantee I'd win with city states alone, but still.

Tactically, the AI seems to have no problem figuring out how to coastal cities. This is sort of realistic though - coastal cities are typically inhabited by idiots (New Orleans), homosexuals (Venice), and blacks (New York), and I can't imagine them putting up much resistance.

On the other hand, it is nearly impossible for the AI to take over an inland city. I have struggled with seemingly impossible tasks before, like putting a condom on my SLUT dog, but I always figured them out after one or two years. Firaxis with an equal amount of time could not overcome this AI obstacle. Thank god these people were not in mission control during Apollo 13. HOUSTON WE'RE GONNA NEED A PATCH. OK JUST GIVE US THREE YEARS AND MORE MONEY, AND WE'LL SWITCH PERSONNEL COMPLETELY AND THEN ATTEMPT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

There's a new gattling gun, which is basically impervious to everything except machine guns, because history.

There are some other new units AND OH MY GOD ARE YOU KIDDING WHY IS STEVE JOBS A GREAT MERCHANT NOW? To recap this game has CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS as a great merchant alongside STEVE JOBS, THE INVENTER OF HANDHELD BATHROOM PORNOGRAPHY AND THE CLICKWHEEL. :MAD: :MAD: :MAD: :ANGRY:

Special mention goes to diplomacy, which is still racist and thinks it is reasonable for me to sign a peace treaty where I give away 5 cities and all my gold to stop a war I am winning. Catherine remains in an odd looking kitchen, and the diplomatic AIs do not seem to care that I pledge to protect certain city states, because even AIs that like me demand tribute from the city states anyway every 10 turn and then force me to either ignore it (hurting city state relations) or condemn them for it (hurting my relations with them.) It is at least possible to predictably form blocs, mainly with civs that A) do not border you and B) are condemning the same civs you are. But it's not like you'll ever get anything meaningful out of that, aside from research deals.

Coordinated warfare, unlike editing this review after Plomp posted it, is still an impossibility. You can't tell AIs to target specific enemy cities or civs. IF WE CAN PUT A CONDOM ON A DOG, WE CAN FIX A BUSTED LUNAR MODULE AND CONSERVE ENOUGH ELECTRICITY TO GET THE BOYS HOME, GENE. INCORPORATING COORDINATED AI WARFARE IN A 20 YEAR OLD GAMING FRANCHISE? WHY THATS JUST LUDICROUS.

And that's it. There are scenarios no one will play. There's a new menu that sucks. There's some new Civs like Austria that are overpowered. I want my money back, Plomp.

[DaShi]

Well, that settles it. I'm not buying G&K if they are going to be that way about it!

[Wiglaf]

Plomp has deleted my review, in violation of his own contest rules and civil law, and is actively deleting my posts in this thread, bizarrely.

As I said, OzzyKP could probably use the $25.19 more than I could. Think of how many snickers bars for child seduction that buys.

The review:

Gods and Kings, hitherto 'GK,' is the first expansion to Jon Shafer's last act as a respected member of the PC videogame industry, known as Civilization 5. GK is a continuation of the trend of cashing in on a successful but highly flawed game by tacking on poorly integrated, barely thought-out game features that really should have been included originally, in working format.

I will break down my thoughts on the additions, the product of lead designer Ed Beach's wonderfully creative brain, which found a way to incorporate not one but two features from old civ games into this expansion pack.

The name: 'Gods' makes sense, but 'Kings' does not. Along with the fact multiplayer has been working about as well as my mail order $49.95 penis enlargement pills, this is a real bad start.

Please let me know if there is a contest where I can get my money back for those penis enlargement pills, thanks.

Boring, uneventful, nukeless espionage: The first thing I noticed is that all my spies have only first names, like Albert, or Alexa, or Fred. While I appreciate the need for secrecy, I do not appreciate feeling like I am sending my god damned pet goldfish off to spy on the enemy. These are professionals and they should be named as such.

Also, evidently the developers could not be bothered to have graphic artists contribute to this part of the game in any way. This expansion is so low budget they just added a couple of menus, and even the menus don't make sense. Espionage gets its own big button up top but religion, a more important game feature, does not. Okay.

The third thing I noticed is that there is almost no strategic depth to this addition. Much like the loss prevention department of a struggling department store, you only have three options: rig useless 'elections,' Steal tech/intrigue, or counter-intel. It goes without saying that if you are a big tech leader, then you just do counter-espionage and maybe influence a city state if you're bored. If you're way behind in tech, you steal tech. Pretty simple. If you simply must influence a city state, go for it, enjoy the thrill down your leg as you 'rig an election' to get a small influence boost over an unthinking, unfeeling dispenser of some faith/gold/food/military units. Whatever. If this excites you, get a girl friend.

Intrigue is the dumbest concept ever introduced in a Civ game because it's not even a coherently integrated game mechanic. For the love of God the developers couldn't implement the whole espionage system in MP because of this incoherence. The basic idea is that your spies in enemy Civs have a chance of learning of that civ's secret war plans, like a plan to sneak attack you or another Civ. Because Civ5 cannot read your mind, the AI can never get intrigue from you.

The developers could have easily remedied this inconsistency, say by requiring all players (including the human) 'draw war plans' 10 turns in advance of an invasion, but they opted to make it impossible for the AI to detect through espionage that you are plotting an invasion. The result is that you get intrigue to play with, and the AI does not. A serious mistake Plomp made was allowing me to edit this review post-publication, a privilege I will abuse here for the first time in this review by calling intrigue a very gay, and very stupid name for a very gay and very stupid mechanic.

Which would be upsetting except for the fact that, a good 80% of the time, your intel is simply that some other AI is plotting to sneak attack another AI, which functions like a positive diplo modifier for you when you share this information with the victim AI. I suppose you could be a douche and not share the intel if you want to hurt the other player, but since the AI rarely follows through on the one-sentence-long invasion plans you learn about through 'intrigue,' no one really cares.

About 20% of the time, intrigue tells you that another civ is working on a wonder. 99% of the time you will not care about this, either.

They might as well have implemented a funnier/more risque/relevant gossip system instead of intrigue, where you can talk about the female civ leaders' performance in the sack. Come to think of it, male leaders are probably more firaxis' type --when you catch an enemy spy, their leader comes up and apologizes by doing the same animation he does when you eliminate him from the game. In the case of the Mayans, this means the leader immediately assumes the blowjob position.

For the record Firaxis I do not need a blowjob everytime I catch someone spying on me. Like I said, low budget. The best part is, if you tell him to stop spying on you after you ejaculate all over him, you still get a negative diplo hit for it. (If he gets caught again, you automatically get another free unwanted Mayan BJ and the opportunity to declare war on him for it, which at least approximates the casus belli system this game needs.)

Oh, and there are new espionage defense buildings like the Constabulatory (which is another name for a police station) and the police station (which is another name for a police station).

Tell me if this picture of Ed Beach isn't from a sex offender registry somewhere? I'd be shocked. http://www.boardgamers.org/wingm/beached.jpg

Customizable, nameable Religions: Finally a way to spread HIV throughout my civilization, just like Reagan.

Unlike espionage, it seems the developers got lucky and found some buried art assets of missionaries and inquisitors to use with this feature. They must have found these files and gotten excited, which was a mistake because the missionaries and inquisitors look every bit like the terrible vanilla-reject 3D models they are.

Basically, civs race to found a limited number of religions, which they can customize with a list of exclusive bonuses that no other religion can later claim. Most of these bonuses will appeal to effete players, like the +1 happiness for being near rivers. I founded racism, which provides a +1 happiness or culture or something for every jungle tile near a city, for obvious reasons, as well as +2 gold for every city following the religion, as well as something else, like more faith points or something useless.

If you found a religion, it is always in your interest to spread it far and wide, being cognizant of the diplo hit you will get if you spread a religion into a civ that has its own religion. It might also be wise to place cities to take advantage of bonuses you may have selected. By 1400 AD, Racism was making me an outrageous amount of gold (something like 40% of my total income), allowing me to buy city states and therefore the game through diplomatic victory.

If you don't found a religion, you are either slow or an idiot, but basically, you get to ignore this entire mechanic. I guess it might be a bad thing if another powerful civ spreads its religion in your cities, but not really, since you still get some of the bonuses from that. Personally, I think it's offensive to think religion actually produces tangible benefits in the game world, since obviously religion only provides these benefits in the afterlife (otherwise poor homeless black people would not be so damn Baptist).

I will again use my editing privileges to note that there is no gay marriage World Wonder in this game, which I can only assume is the case because the game was made by Orthodox Jews.

Speaking of, I still think Jews should be a new civilization, which the Hollywood Unique ability providing +10 happinesss per theater. You may say this is overpowered but that is what Hitler is for, and it goes without saying what his unique ability would be.

AI: It was very clear I was buying up every city state (literally every one) and beelining to Globalization to build the UN. No Civ stopped this, told me to stop, attacked my capital, anything. Once I built the UN, all the city states and three civs voted for me, including Catherine, who was way ahead of me by score. I cannot understand why an AI that wants to win the game would do nothing at the strategic level to stop someone else's obvious attempt to win, and then on top of that, vote voluntarily to lose the game. It didn't matter what the civs did, since buying the city states up/patronage/Greece made it a guarantee I'd win with city states alone, but still.

Tactically, the AI seems to have no problem figuring out how to coastal cities. This is sort of realistic though - coastal cities are typically inhabited by idiots (New Orleans), homosexuals (Venice), and blacks (New York), and I can't imagine them putting up much resistance.

On the other hand, it is nearly impossible for the AI to take over an inland city. I have struggled with seemingly impossible tasks before, like putting a condom on my SLUT dog, but I always figured them out after one or two years. Firaxis with an equal amount of time could not overcome this AI obstacle. Thank god these people were not in mission control during Apollo 13. HOUSTON WE'RE GONNA NEED A PATCH. OK JUST GIVE US THREE YEARS AND MORE MONEY, AND WE'LL SWITCH PERSONNEL COMPLETELY AND THEN ATTEMPT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

There's a new gattling gun, which is basically impervious to everything except machine guns, because history.

There are some other new units AND OH MY GOD ARE YOU KIDDING WHY IS STEVE JOBS A GREAT MERCHANT NOW? To recap this game has CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS as a great merchant alongside STEVE JOBS, THE INVENTER OF HANDHELD BATHROOM PORNOGRAPHY AND THE CLICKWHEEL. :MAD: :MAD: :MAD: :ANGRY:

Special mention goes to diplomacy, which is still racist and thinks it is reasonable for me to sign a peace treaty where I give away 5 cities and all my gold to stop a war I am winning. Catherine remains in an odd looking kitchen, and the diplomatic AIs do not seem to care that I pledge to protect certain city states, because even AIs that like me demand tribute from the city states anyway every 10 turn and then force me to either ignore it (hurting city state relations) or condemn them for it (hurting my relations with them.) It is at least possible to predictably form blocs, mainly with civs that A) do not border you and B) are condemning the same civs you are. But it's not like you'll ever get anything meaningful out of that, aside from research deals.

Coordinated warfare, unlike editing this review after Plomp posted it, is still an impossibility. You can't tell AIs to target specific enemy cities or civs. IF WE CAN PUT A CONDOM ON A DOG, WE CAN FIX A BUSTED LUNAR MODULE AND CONSERVE ENOUGH ELECTRICITY TO GET THE BOYS HOME, GENE. INCORPORATING COORDINATED AI WARFARE IN A 20 YEAR OLD GAMING FRANCHISE? WHY THATS JUST LUDICROUS.

And that's it. There are scenarios no one will play. There's a new menu that sucks. There's some new Civs like Austria that are overpowered. I want my money back, Plomp.

[Hauldren Collider]

Plomp is a cheating ********er

[Wiglaf]

Gobbles would be proud.

[Elok]

I thank you for that awesome review, Wiglaf. Sorry it doesn't get you your money back.

[Wiglaf]

You are welcome

Don't worry about me. Think of the unfortunate kids that OzzyKP will be wooing with promises of a $25.19 allowance. Wasn't one Sandusky enough?

http://www.amazon.com/Touched-The-Je...ndusky+touched

[Elok]

Uh, I'm not going to comment on the Ozzy thing, but I just read that when Sandusky got to jail (last December), the other inmates greeted him by singing "Another Brick" en masse. Specifically, the "hey, teacher, leave them kids alone" part. I think that is excellent.

[gribbler]

Infinitely more readable and informative than OzzyKP's review, IMHO.

[-Jrabbit]

Awesome review. Very informative.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It is likely the greatest review ever written

[-Jrabbit]

It told me what I need to know, and even what to think!

[onodera]

Wiglaf, thank you for convincing me to stick with C4BTS and saving my money. Plomp should be ashamed of himself.

[Wiglaf]

Plomp is in denial, as are many of his fellow nerds. It is amusing to watch the nerds act as though the diplomacy model has been vastly improved because you can now ask the AI to "promise" to stop spying on you on spreading religion in your territory. Nevermind the fact that asking for these promises inexplicably makes you the bad guy and gives you a big negative modifier. Another favorite negative modifier of mine: "We bullied a city state you like, and you told us to knock it off". Or the infamous "You are a warmongering menace to the world" because you took a single city of someone who declared war on your ally. Or "we are competing for the affection of the same city states" or "we are in close proximity to each other." So very stupid. Do they play their own game?

I should add that my twinky Greek civ, with patronage, literally prevented my influence with my city state allies from degrading at all. With the money from racism (which I spread only to 7 or 8 cities), I easily made every city state I met an instant ally, and they never even remotely drifted away from that status thanks to the patronage+Greek unique abiltiy. Even when the AI tried to use spies to influence them, it wasn't nearly enough to make them flip.

I'm not sure how the math on that works, but come on. Also, anyone who uses piety is a moron, and Austria is also ridiculous, since it lets you convert all the city states into your own cities with almost no cost. Just as long as you get a religion that isn't useless, money won't be much of an issue.

Firaxis just didn't bother to play balance this thing at all, or come up with new ideas. It's too bad. I do hope for the next expansion they balance things better, convert Steve Jobs from a great merchant to a Great douchebag, return some interesting features (internal politics, corporations, espionage w/ opportunity costs), either replace the AI or eliminate 1UPT, and really try to make the diplomacy less reliant on arbitrary modifiers and more responsive to things going on in the game (like someone buying up city states, ejaculating repeatedly all over the Mayans, getting ahead in tech, gunning for a culture win etc).

[Dinner]

BTW I liked Wiggy's review and even commented on it before the Plomp deleted it.

[Elok]

What's the actual name of the "racism" religious trait Wiggy refers to so much? It's hard to believe they actually used that name. OTOH, they made Civ5 and the "funny" giant death robot, so who knows what other terrible judgment they may have displayed?

[Felch]

I think he's saying that he named his religion "Racism."

[Sava]

racism

[Elok]

I think he's saying that he named his religion "Racism."

Oh. Durr.

I thought it was his name for one of those goofy traits like "holy war" or "desert folklore" the new religion system uses.

[MikeH]

This is a more helpful review than any of the more official ones I've read.

[Felch]

It makes me want to found a religion with a provocative name.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Great review, thank you for sacrificing 25$ so that we don't have to