Fountain of Youth?

[DarthVeda]

I seem to remember one of the big bonuses for discovery from the original was the Fountain of Youth. You'd get six free units from the docks in Europe (whatever was in the religious emigration queue).

However, after fully exploring a Standard and Huge map, it seems that this is no longer in the game. Definitely a good idea for a mod, though.

Another nice find was El Dorado, worth quite a substantial bit more than the normal treasure haul.

[Dale]

FoY and El Dorado were massive boosts for whoever found one. So much so it could win the game for you. Thus they were removed.

[Ari Rahikkala]

The message for a really rich treasure was that you found one of the Seven Cities of the Cibola, actually. I'm not sure at all but I have a vague feeling I found eight of them in a game once

[DarthVeda]

Originally posted by Dale
FoY and El Dorado were massive boosts for whoever found one. So much so it could win the game for you. Thus they were removed.

Then I assume this was an MP-inspired change. Why then keep random starts? Players are potentially going to start with vastly different levels of resources at the start of the game. Where it's going to make the biggest difference.

[Vesayen]

I'd like the option to enable them for single player.

[DarthVeda]

Which makes it sound like a mod would be ideal

[Bkeela]

We can't have the player winning and having fun. They were omitted for your own good.

[Ijuin]

Maybe a weaker version might be in order, whereby you only get two new colonists instead of six?

[DarthVeda]

Or all European nations get something? The founder gets six, the others three?

There's a number of ways to make it work without destroying balance.

[ParticleHustler]

Originally posted by Bkeela
We can't have the player winning and having fun. They were omitted for your own good.

It does feel like the attempts to tighten up the original to make the game more challenging are at the expense of the "fun factor." I'm reading too many comments about "this was an exploit, it was too easy to win or gave an unfair advantage, etc."

If I only play single person, who should care if I win every game, or even cheat to win? I think the harder difficulties make the game challenging, but dropping out a fun part of the game because it makes the game easier to win is not a valid reason to can it entirely, IMO. This, as well as the custom house drop, don't make any sense to me from a pure "fun factor" POV.

[Aerion]

As usual, multiplayer is the bane of the single-player's existence. How many great single-player games are going to be sacrificed at the alter of the multi-player idol?

Can't a game just be a single-player game?

[snoopy369]

Strategy games - SP or MP - should be, at some levels, difficult to win. Many people play them for that purpose. The game should be fun to play while still being difficult, and also have a level that is not difficult for people who prefer sandbox games.

That's why exploits are removed - so that the game is more competitive. It should still be fun, for most people, and if it's not then it's failing - but that doesn't mean you leave exploits in. The reasoning that says you should leave unbalanced game mechanics in logically completes with "you should give all players infinite money and resources"; which would be boring in the extreme for most of us (and, via xml, you COULD do that yourself if you really wanted to).

Col is designed as a SP game, and largely is only SP; it's not a game that makes a lot of sense as MP except for a small few. It's not adequately competitive for a long time, so most people won't play it MP I suspect except for the Diplogame community and a few others perhaps. (But we'll see ... you never know what people will do.)

FoY and similar can and undoubtedly will be added via mods - if they're that interesting to players, it will happen, and probably sooner rather than later. The base game should be balanced for everyone to play; but there's nothing stopping modders from adding in the Fountain of Youth, El Cibola, and others. The ability to make the game as fun as you want is one of the great things about the Civ4 model.

[ParticleHustler]

I don't disagree with any of that, but the seemingly overriding idea that the game should be made difficult at the expense of fun game elements (or ignoring the tedium that results from a decision, like removing Custom House) rather than keeping those elements in and finding a way to lessen the competitive advantages they provide, is where I see the process going awry.

I love customization of games in general, but the "do it yourself if that's the way you want to play" aspect of the design process is a big negative to the move toward total customization. Just IMO, of course.

[snoopy369]

Custom house, as it was in Col1, was not a good game mechanic. I have no disagreement with the idea of adding in a custom house-like building that will sell things appropriately, not under embargo, not during rev war; and may do so myself, in fact.

I think you're misunderstanding my argument about customization. I think that games should be made well, and fun for as many people as is reasonable. I think, however, that customization is a good thing for people who prefer the game to be different from how the developer thinks is fun. There will always be many differences in what people think are fun ...

[ebonyknight]

Gotta agree. It just seems like in the 90's gamers made games for gamers. Nowadays (even for the great Sid himself) it seems like now it's not about the gamers anymore, it's about making money.

Back in the mid 90's, if you made a "bad, buggy" game, you paid for it by no one buying your game. Now it seems like everyone just pushes the game out, if it sells fine, if not, fine too, because people will still buy it. I don't know of a better example than Spore.

It's truly a sad day (at least for me) that Sid could release such a broken classic.

If this is how games from Firaxis are going to be from now on, forget giving me any more Civs, Alpha Centauri or whatever.

It's things like this that sound the death knell for the PC gamer.