Civ 4 - The List of BAD Ideas.

[SMIFFGIG]

ignorant
its a matter of opinion, and i was expressing mine.
Have you not learned what democracy is ?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG
Ahh good, got the impression there he was ppl who hated linux just because they had (heard) it was crap :P

More precisely, I tested Linux in VERY good faith on my computer (a whole week where I coped with various problems, read tons of doc etc. in order to finally find the "Linux gem").
I still have a Linux boot on my computer, but there's a reason I never use it. And that's because it's an inconvenient complex system with the sole satidfaction of geeks in mind

[SMIFFGIG]

u really think a whole Operating system would be designed for one sole purpose being
to satisfy geeks ?

Linux may not be user friendly but the majority of internet servers use the operating system, so i think its design concept stretches beyond the sole purpose of satisfying geeks.
Anyway this is getting way off topic

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG
ignorant
its a matter of opinion, and i was expressing mine.
Have you not learned what democracy is ?

[Kuciwalker]

Spiffor, should I PM Asher and ask him to say a few choice words to SMIFFGIG here?

[Maquiladora]

SMIFFGIG is correct, its nothing to do with being ignorant, its called having an opinion. Id say calling Clash of civs "utter crap" is opinion (a wrong one IMO), but we're all anxiously awaiting your effort at programming a game from scratch, young skywalker... oh wait, no we're not.

[Plotinus]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy I think calling Charlemagne French is a bit like the English claiming King Arthur isn't it?...
And anyway, what did Charlemagne actually do that's any more significant than a host of other imperial rulers?

*chokes for a bit* Arthur is a mythical figure who, if he existed at all, was a Romano-Celt who fought *against* the Anglo-Saxons. Charlemagne, by contrast, was a very real person who was Frankish - in other words, what would one day become the French. His court followed him around but was generally based at Aachen. The French equivalent of Arthur would be Roland, an amazingly hard knight who is supposed to have been in the service of - oh! Charlemagne.

As for what he did... he created an empire that, when it was split up, formed the basis for modern-day Europe (this is why the Medieval scenario begins in 843, the date when it was split into what we would recognise as France and Germany, plus Burgandy or Lotharingia, which got divided up by the others). Equally importantly, he imposed religious uniformity throughout his massive domains, collaborating with people like Boniface to ensure that Christianity was well established everywhere. His close relationship with the Papacy was a major factor in the rise of that institution as a political power in Europe, and in the end of what lingering power Byzantium had there. He encouraged and imported scholars, thereby creating the "Carolingian renaissance", which contrary to popular belief was not a shallow and brief flickering in an age of barbarism but a sustained and broad period of learning. Charlemagne legislated for schools to be opened throughout his empire, which were open to all children, and charged no fees beyond what parents could pay. This laid the groundwork for the universities and explosion of education of the high Middle Ages. In other words, Charlemagne was, more than anyone else, the architect of the Middle Ages, and therefore of modernity. A very important person! Plus cool, given that he was supposedly eight feet tall and in the habit of crushing horse shoes with his bare hands. In terms of emperors who influenced future European history, I would rank him with, say, Julius Caesar, Constantine the Great, Justinian I and Heraclius (and the latter two weren't exactly European).

[SMIFFGIG] FYI: Democracy means rule by the people. It is a political system and has nothing to do with freedom of speech, which is a completely different thing. They often, but not always, and not necessarily, accompany each other: for example, Japan has freedom of speech but is not particularly democratic; classical Athens had democracy but not freedom of speech (hence the execution of Socrates).

Stop me if I get off topic in any way, won't you? The last thing I want is to turn into a troll...

[yellowdaddy]

I think you just did!

but, yeah, I know all that (i was being an agent provocoteur!) - I've got a copy of Longman's "Chronicle of the world" too!!!

but he wasn't French was he, he was effectively German - as the Franks were a German tribe as i'm sure you well know. France does not really exist until a while after his death.
i think you're exaggerating his role a little, I agree he was hardly irrelevant, but he certainly wasn't

the architect of the Middle Ages, and therefore of modernity

(Britain would have probably gone to Celtic Christianity and done no worse...)

These three kingdoms would be the foundations of later France and the Holy Roman Empire.

After Charlemagne's death, continental coinage degraded and most of Europe resorted to using the continued high quality English coin until about AD 1100.

http://www.ezresult.com/article/Charlemagne (wikipedia)
(it seems like his dad did most of the work!)

there are plenty of other figures who did at least as much as he did to contirbute to "modernity", but to go into it would be seriously off-topic, and definitely trolling

ps - and i don't see what's particularly cool about being 8 foot tall and crushing horse bones.

[SMIFFGIG]

Plotinus
correct me if im wrong, but i thought Freedom of speach was a basic fundimental of democracy
or is it simply they more often or not fall hand in hand ?

[yellowdaddy]

Trolling section:
i don't know if freedom of speech in japan is quite the same as in dear old Blighty either, peer pressure is so strong there that they hardly need it... you can't really grumble too much about what your company is doing if you don't agree with it or you could suddenly find yourself jobless, homeless and friendless. speaking as someone who went to university in japan for a time, (but by no means an expert on the place), i'd call it a pretend democracy! a "benign oligarchy", perhaps.
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Spiffor - I think you know what I mean about my Linux comment... not that the game is like Linux specifically, but is in the same spirit of consumers wresting control from companies to produce something they want, instead of being spoonfed the sort of colourful samey gameplay that satisfiess the "simple needs" of some people. At the very least if it gets finished it might end up making the Civ series respond with something better,

..in response to SkyW, I think you know full well it's an unfinished project and has a long way to go, so it's an easy snipe to say it's crap at the moment - it's just a basic demo for peat's sake! It does need some more user-friendly interfaces and nicer gfx, but i think they'll come - they have a new map system on the way which sounds interesting. The depth and breadth of the whole game concept is becoming greater than Civ, and when all the boring coding is mostly done and the pretty gfx and sound is slapped on it I think it could be better than Civ .Civ. .

[Mr. President]

They had better not use the Civilization III trade system again.

[keybounce]

Odd -- I actually liked the plain square, easy to see/understand Civ1 graphics.

I agree that the tech tree is a great place to make improvements/changes. But this is a "Don't want". So,

Having 4 ages doesn't hurt a modder. You can put everything into one huge single age -- see rise of rome.

What I don't like:
Arbitrary limits on a civ. A civ can only research one tech. A civ can only build one space ship. (No secondary construction on a backup ship in case the first is destroyed?). A civ has only one universal "flat tax". No ability to spend money on a city. [Currently: Happyness in a city comes only from that cities's specialists, or from bumping up the national tax rate for happyness. You have no true national currency -- you can't tax from one city, and spend it on happyness in another city, even after making currency.]

An idea for the tech tree: Even though you have ages, techs in ages 2, 3, etc, have normal prereqs. A game rule is "forced ages", and can be turned on or off.

Oh, sorry, I'm getting off the "don't want" topic again.

[asleepathewheel]

How long has Clash of Civilizations been worked on? From their website, it predates Nov. 1999, not sure how much earlier they started. I also see that the last demo was from Jan 8, 2003. When is the expected final release due?

[Kuciwalker]

..in response to SkyW, I think you know full well it's an unfinished project and has a long way to go, so it's an easy snipe to say it's crap at the moment - it's just a basic demo for peat's sake! It does need some more user-friendly interfaces and nicer gfx, but i think they'll come - they have a new map system on the way which sounds interesting. The depth and breadth of the whole game concept is becoming greater than Civ, and when all the boring coding is mostly done and the pretty gfx and sound is slapped on it I think it could be better than Civ .Civ. .

It's a spreadsheet game. Therefore, it sucks.

[keybounce]

(Ok, I know this topic is really long, and this is only page two).

Infinite movement along railroads is NOT a problem. I repeat, NOT a problem.

One turn is supposed to be a long time, right?

How long does it take to travel from Los Angeles to New York by rail? 5 days? 10 days?

How long is a turn? 2 years?

The idea of "We have a well developed transportation system that allows units to move very long distances in relatively short time" is a very realistic one.

Now, how about a scenario-specific option/alternative? Right now you only have plain, road, railroad. Nothing like Road, Highway, Railroad. Nothing like "Road is hardcoded at 1/3; Railroad is scenario coded at 1/N", where N could be anything from 5 to 100.

I haven't played with short turns in Civ3's editors, but didnt Civ2's editor allow you to specify turns at the month or week level for WW2 battle scenarios? At that level, railroads might be large but not infinite.