What happened to Firaxis?

[M. le Comte]

Originally posted by vovan


Indeed. Check out this Civilization screenshot:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/sid-meiers-civilization/screenshots/gameShotId,2906/

Golden Age

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Alex
We have a new Coracle!!

[Zoid]

Re: What happened to Firaxis?

Originally posted by Fitz
Soren seems to think "less micromanagement" is a good thing, specifically with regards to removing corruption. How can he think that yer average TBS player wants less micromanagement and not more? The all time great Firaxis game, Alpha Centauri, was the best precisely because it allowed huge amounts of micromanagement. Civ III was a massive backward step, dumbing down to an incredible degree. Don't they learn from their mistakes?

Speaking of mistakes, can't they get a real graphics design team? More of the same stupid Civ III cartoon graphics, makes it look like Stan Lee bought the company and created Marvelization.

Has anyone heard anything to indicate that one day we might see another genius release, an Alpha Centauri II (even if it is set in the Civ Line of games)?

I think I´ll wait until the game is released and I played a few games before I pass judgement on Firaxis. I think Civ III eventually became a great game. I don´t want too much micromanagment, I therefore have a good feeling about cIV.

[Maniac]

As a SMACer I'd say SMAC was great despite with its many options, dspite the micromanagement you are forced to do.

On the other side; SMAC did have one thing that seriously reduces the need for micromanagement compared to all other civ games: excess minerals are carried forward to the next production item! No need to precisely produce an amount of minerals to prevent waste! I seriously hope they include that in Civ4. In fact it'll be one of the main reasons for me to or not to buy Civ4.

[Zoid]

If you´d asked me 2 years ago, I would´ve said SMAC was easily the best. But now...nah. There´s features in both games that make them great and SMAC has a nicer feel to it, but still. Civ III is a lot more comfortable to play...

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Fitz
Title of the thread edited. Edit: Make that, I tried to. ::sigh::

Helped you a bit, now that I can...

[Jon Miller]

the AI has a tough enough time dealing with Civs complexity

the added complexity of the unit design process in SMAC was not all that fun (you ended up using the same units.. here was the offensive one, here the defensive one, etc) and the computer couldn'thandle it (the default units which the computer used all sucked)

Jon Miller

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Alex

Civ III was a massive backward step, dumbing down to an incredible degree. Don't they learn from their mistakes?

Speaking of mistakes, can't they get a real graphics design team? More of the same stupid Civ III cartoon graphics, makes it look like Stan Lee bought the company and created Marvelization.

We have a new Coracle!!

OMG, I had forgotten about that guy.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
the AI has a tough enough time dealing with Civs complexity

the added complexity of the unit design process in SMAC was not all that fun (you ended up using the same units.. here was the offensive one, here the defensive one, etc) and the computer couldn'thandle it (the default units which the computer used all sucked)

Jon Miller

Inspired by this thread, I actually fired up a game of SMAC (my first in 4 years...) and had this problem almost immedeately. I´m glad for the streamlining of units in Civ III.

[binTravkin]

My point of micromanagement:

1.For a good TBS there must be as much MM as possible giving as much flexibility as possible.

2.For a good TBS MM must have "shortcuts". It must have either good automatic/default options or special tools which allow you to set priorities one time and change them depending on situation.
The Solver's idea of flagging a polluted square "this must be cleaned" and workers from the closest squares running to it after completion of their current job is one great thing which should be included.

To summarize:
A TBS must have as much MM as possible with as much (and as good) automation options as possible.


A couple of TBS's in my view:

SMACX:
+much MM, much flexibility
+automation options

-automation option performance

Civ:
+/-average MM (the only real MM thing being moving workers)
+/-some automation options (again - worker automation)

-automation option performance (2 times sillier than SMACX formers' ways on "fully automate")


It is obvious that there are two types of us, TBSers:

1.the micromanager
2.the easy fun player

If Firaxis continue to make games like SMACX or Civ3 they risk losing fans of one of those types.

The two options are:
1.make 2 gamelines for TBS (which is not the case as Civ is the only TBS gameline for Firaxis, SMAC being an exception)
2.make the TBS like I described above, so people who want MM can MM and can MM exactly what they want to MM other things being automated. I've played SMACX with everything automated. It is still a fun game, but disgusting to see the wasted time and resources by stupid automation options.

[Kuciwalker]

Re: Re: What happened to Firaxis? Are they Stupid?

@ binTraven

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Originally posted by Fitz
The all time great Firaxis game, Alpha Centauri, was the best precisely because it allowed huge amounts of micromanagement.

Go play SW: Rebellion and say that with a straight face...

If you want MM up the wazoo, play Victoria, not Civ.

[PJayTycy]

(Sorry for using smac terms, I have never played Civ)

Micromanagement in Civ4 shouldn't be a problem. I think we will be able to change the way automated city governors, formers, ... work.

Now we almost always play with as less automation as possible, because it's not 100% like we would do it. If we can change these automation orders, we have the best of both worlds.

[Solver]

BinTravkin,

It is not neccessary to have/do a lot of MM to be a good player. No, surely, the best players such as Aeson do micromanage a lot. However, a good portion of that MM can still be avoided. In my opinion, MM of workers is the best example of this. Just look at how CtP does that in contrast to SMAC and Civ, the CtP way is much easier.

They don't even have to get rid of Workers to do that. But, for instance, implement this. You build Workers, but they don't appear on the map, instead they go to a "worker pool". Then, using the interface, you can place tile improvements on tiles. When you do, a Worker from the pool will be assigned to that tile. It can even be made so that construction of the improvement starts after x turns, where x is the amount of turns needed to get to that tile from the nearest city.

This would stay true to the traditional Civ Settler/Worker model, but with doing much less MM. This is because there is no way how moving 100 workers is fun just by itself. The same reason why we need good stacked movement. When in a modern war, you don't want to move 80 units each turn by hand.

SMAC was great because of the options it provided, sure. Yet I never had much fun in actually moving my Formers, I'd have preferred if I could place tasks for them like above. Or maybe implement some sort of action queues for terraform units - sort of like you can do in RTS games. Yet, of course, each game I built a ton of Formers and moved them around because that was required. On the upside, indeed, some SMAC automation options were good - for instance, the auto roadbuild.

Still, Civ4 can provide such simplicity without depriving anyone of the chance to MM. After all, even if you get easier tile improvement assignement, you can still sit with a calculator in front of the computer and count what and when you need to.

[Cookie Monster]

Let's wait until the game comes out before judgeing if the micromanagement detail is not enough for this game!

So far from what I've seen this game looks pretty good.

[Spiffor]

So far, we only know that they'll tackle micromanagement by having no more "whack-a-mole" pollution, and apparently by reducing the amount of military units in later eras.

Such orientations don't reduce the complexity of the game any bit. Pollution remains a problem that has to be tackled, and war remains tactical (actually, war will be more tactical than in the previous games).

By tackling MM, Firaxis doesn't tackle complexity off the game. At the contrary, when fewer decisions are tedious repetitve work, the player is confronted with more interesting decisions.

The reason why Civ3 has fewer gameplay features than SMAC isn't because of the lack of MM, but because of a design decision to make the game less complex, for the AI to be more competitive. From what we've seen now, Civ4 has reintroduced almost all of SMAC features, while also keeping the new Ci3 features (trade, culture), and adding a whole new religion model to the mix.

There is only one aspect where Civ4 will be less complex than SMAC and Civ3, it's diplomatic bargainings (apprently, you can only trade something for some other thing of the same nature, i.e. tech for a tech, resource for a resource etc.). On all other matters, Civ4 will provide more complexity than either Civ3 or SMAC.