Your Worst Fear for Civ 4 (The Negativity Post)

[The Templar]

My fear - the economy of scale returns. Victoria solved this problem. Compare Belgian research with Chinese research in Victoria, where being a land giant is no guarantee of success. Civ has been around for over 15 years, there is no excuse not to fix this. (Oh, and diplomacy is a big second ...)

[Sarxis]

I just don't want to be let down like we were with CivIII. CivIII was not so much a bad game, but it just wasn't the next step up for the series. We need more and better in this genre, not caked over.

Give us ingenious! Create something for us to marvel at Firaxis!

[Dale]

My two fears:

1. One-on-one combat (this has already been confirmed though) instead of true stacked/combined combat.
2. Worker diarrhea.

Dale

[DerSchwarzfalke]

That the resource problem from Civ III remains a pain in the ass that ruins too many promising games.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

You just reminded me. My other major fear is that they will retain the Binary Resource system from Civ3 (i.e., you either have it or not-no gradation). IMO, having a graded resource system-which ties resource depletion to deposit size vs empire size-will have a huge impact on improving economics and reducing the 'Economies of Scale' problem.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
That Civ IV will be MOO3ed.

My worst fear is, that Civ4 will be Conquested. Meaning, released as a game with great features, but rushed in a way, that it's blown quality-wise and never patched in an appropriate way.

Admittedly, the chances that this will happen, are not very big. But the trauma inflicted in late 2003 is still sitting deep. Only a Civ4 which is great out of the box, and thoroughly supported afterwards, might be able to heal it. So far it's looking not bad.

[Dis]

that it's too much like civ3.

ie simplistic gameplay for the purpose of aiding the AI.

AI is overrated. If it's so important, why is SMAC a better game despite having a worse AI?

And the problem with a lot of these simplistic things, is they are hard coded. So these aren't something that can be changed in the editor.

I'm not looking for something as complex as EU (though I haven't actually played it), but some of the civ3 properties are just cheesy in their simplicity.

[Robert]

My worst fear is that I have became to old to be able to get used to new games and I may become and old grumphy forum user who won't like the game (even if it is good) but will hount these forums forever trying to convince the others that the game sucks.

That's my worst fear

[Adm.Naismith]

Only one working strategy. Many things can go wrong, ending in this single point of failure: you have only one way to win the game, and doing it in proper sequence you beat the game at the highest level.

E.g.
- we have the promise of a research tree, were we are free to chose between different path (in only there isn't a single shortcut to discover worth the victory? )
- we'll have the new, polished A.I. (if only it's capable to adapt choices to game situation, avoiding silly tactics, you learn to override? )
- we'll have great people everywhere (if only they don't umbalance the game as a kind of Civilization of Heroes, where rushing for heroes is paveway to victory? )
- they removed plenty of game features to reduce micromanagement (if only they substituted them with meaningful alternative, not leaving us with boring flat "next turn"? ).

I'm neither really ranting nor love the game until I can't play it, but for the purpose of this thread I think that so many things can ruin the game as in the old story:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost; being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for want of care about a horse-shoe nail.
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac

So, better Firaxis wathes for nails very carefully

I want to play a great game and give good credit to Firaxis for it; there is no point in waiting for a bad game and have nothing to do ban ranting on a forum!

edited to remove too many smiles; sorry!

[Donegeal]

Originally posted by Krill
My fear is that the game economics are dumbed down to the level that Micromanagement is a waste of time.

[Donegeal]

Re: Your Worst Fear for Civ 4 (The Negativity Post)

Originally posted by yin26
"An SP game that I can easily beat on the hard level right out of the box."

Just like you were able to do with CivIII? Wow...

[yin26]

Hmmm, somebody's missing the point?

[yin26]

By the way, some fond Civ3 memories -- 48 hours after release. I figure this fits in the Negativity Thread.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31501

[Grallon]

All eye candy and no more substance than before. Look at the screenshots - this looks like clone of the RTS spawned after AoE !

They should change the name - there's no civilizing being done in this series - just a linear & predictable walk in the park from A to Z.

There are so many games out there with interesting takes on these issues (the Paradox games are a shinning exemple of this) - why not take inspiration from those ? But no - we can't do that can we ?

If Firaxis attempts to milk this tired old cow once more - can it only mean they need the money.



G.

[vee4473]

Originally posted by Alex


This is my worst fear too.

We have been provided lots of information about the game so far, but the least mentioned part of it is diplomacy. I wonder why information about this essential part of the game is so scarce... And this scares me a lot...

ditto, i mentioned the same question when the previews came out.

suspiciously absent details of diplomacy.