Your Worst Fear for Civ 4 (The Negativity Post)

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by yin26
Yes, but does the train have infinite movement per turn?

ROTFL!

Originally posted by Solver
Pessimism is optimism looking for light in the wrong damn direction!

ROTFL 2!

[The Emperor Fabulous]

My computer, even though it meets all requirements, is extremely slow and crashes occasionally while I play Sims 2.

I really hope Civ 4 doesn't do this

[Darkstar]

Originally posted by yin26
I hereby affirm that I will follow through on this. In fairness, though, it's hard to imagine a Civ game that isn't dictated by ICS (not the exploit version but the mass cities everywhere version) and dull combat. Certainly nothing announced about Civ 4 appears to counter this, though Briggs said some tweaks to the game mean you don't "necessarily" need to build lots of cities. Well, heck, you don't necessarily need to build two cities in Civ for that matter!

On the second point, stack-to-stack combat doesn't bore people to death any more? But, giving Firaxis the benefit of the doubt for a moment, maybe they've worked this angle enough. I'd be happy if carefully planned combined arms, accounting for terrain features, are essential to winning wars. That is, I'm not interested in the eye candy but I do want combat that is meaningful and challenging (not just more 'amass and attack').

If Firaxis delivers, however, on a game where the quality of your cities is far more important than their number, and where combat isn't more about micromanagement than it is strategic thinking, then I will eat part of the box. In fact, I have recipes ready, and I already know that I'd do this over three meals during one day. I will provide digital photos of the entire process, should one occur.

Dream on.

War won't change. What is it now in a Civ style game? Let's put aside the "alpha strike" whereby you just instantly invade all your opponent's cities, and look purely at the military units. What's that leave? Purely micro-management. You want to destroy more units of the enemy then he can replace, while preserving more of your units then you lose, so that you can, once again, take his cities (and thereby further decrease your opponents ability to make military units). This will not change so long as: tiles -> cities -> units.

Of course, you will always want more cities so long as:
tiles -> cities -> Everything else.

Whether it's turning money into research or shields into units, as long as it is cities that transform the raw resources (tiles) into everything else, the most best quality cities will always win. So ICS will always be the one true path to victory. Change how tiles get processed into everything else, and then, ICS won't matter.

Consider, if you had to build a barracks to turn shields into infantry... but you could build barracks ANYWHERE. Not just in that special city tile. By allowing roads, rivers, rails, or other ports to be your production distrubition network, your barracks could then pull in a share of your production, and use that to make a military unit. (If the barracks wasn't attached to your production network, it would be limited at half capacity to collect from adjoining tiles... as if it was a tiny city or hamlet.) Whats this gain you? You want to make 10 armies every 5 turns? Build 10 barracks, connect them to your infrastructure (road them to other things), and have the raw resources (whether by trade with neighbors or by your own hard work). No need for 10 cities.

You could do that for every major layer of Civ, easily. Cities then aren't cities. They'd just be government centers or commerce centers.

Easy to do. You'd still be concentrating on your tiles though, because that is the source of all things, in Civ. But you wouldn't worry so much about the cities, as you would the infrastructure that converts those resources into whatever you need.

[SpencerH]

Yin is right. Despite small changes, ICS will be the best way to win and combat will continue to suck. Why bother to hope.

Abandon all hope, ye who pass these gates.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by SpencerH
...
Abandon all hope, ye who pass these gates.

Nah! Instead, I will spend more time reading history and playing (or at least learning to play) CtP2-Ages of Man.

That way I am spending much less time at the Civ4 forums which rarely have more than idle speculation and heresay (and heresy! ).

My worst fear is that I will get caught up in all the bs here and at CFC, not enjoying my other endeavors. Once Civ4 is released, I will have my new IV-compatible computer and will enjoy the game, at least until I personally experience serious game defects.

[Senethro]

My worst fear?

That in erring on the side of caution and in an effort to placate all the cowardly builders out there, defenders are favoured in some way in combat.

[MxM]

My worst fear is that the beginning of the game will be interesting (as usual) and the game end is not, because of the larger size of your civ, and because most of the interesting staff (religion, new governments) are already in the past.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Senethro
My worst fear?

That in erring on the side of caution and in an effort to placate all the cowardly builders out there, defenders are favoured in some way in combat.

I guess us cowardly builders can stick with civilizing China and Japan (or Sokoto for a real challenge) in Victoria.

Really, if it is supposed to be Civ, then it really needs to be something more than a war game. There are plenty of war games on the market already, and most of them better at war than Civ.

Frankly, I wish Firaxis would take a look at the resources and industrialization system in Victoria to see how its done. (Or at least read some Jared Diamond in make the necessary modifications to Civ ...)

[Xorbon]

My worst fear is that the inter-civ trade system is exactly the same as it is in Civ 3, with no added depth. Or worse, that it's the same as Civs 1 & 2.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Darkstar
Of course, you will always want more cities so long as:
tiles -> cities -> Everything else.

AFAIK the problem is born when one city size2 < production than two cities size 1.
Cities *are* hubs to commerce, culture and (in industrial suburb) production, while food come from far when city grown from a village status. In real life large cities have advantage and disadvantage over more sparse small town, but is unrealistic that *ever* small town can grown to large metropolis in the end.

So, unleashing the ICS horde of settler is bad for the game, but an empire built on a couple of cities is silly on many point.

*IF* the Firaxis health concept is spawn over all the territory, you can compute a reasonable population grown on a full *territory* base, nevermind if you grown population in a single city or five small town.

The failure concepts have been: more food on worked tile=automatic grow of population; more population=more shield/hammer; more cities= more "free tile" production *and* more early surrounding tile.

If healt can cap the population on the whole area, and a kind of migration model can force you to juggle with shifting pop. between many small town or a more stable single city, may be you can shift the ICS enough to bring back the joy of a lenght game.

Well, I have hope
There must be a slice of hope in the negativity post, as in "the darkest hour of the night is just before dawn" kind of quote.

[Sir Og]

My worst fear is that the new features (religion etc.) would suck as much as culture/culture flips used to suck.
I also fear that the combat system will be stupid.

[Solver]

Well, culture flips got fixed in Civ4, so they aren't going to make a step backwards with that.

I can not see how the combat system can suck since we have the need for combined arms, promotions and specific bonuses for units.

[Sir Og]

I did not say that it is going to suck. I said I'm afraid that it may turn out to be bad
In civ2 the combat system was pretty good but the problem was that all games ended with howitzers rolling on RR. So far we can not say for sure that the new system is not going to produce something similar.
The combat system is very important and I am rather dissapointed that there are still no true armies in civ games. (I hope that the civ4 system will deliver the desired combined arms effect)
It will be a showstopper for me if such an important part of the game is messed up.

[Solver]

Well, I thought the Civ3 Army implementation was dreadful.

Civ4 isn't going to have CtP-like stack combat, but with all the promotions and stuff, it should be different enough. Soren himself said on this forum that one huge stack of one type of unit is definitely not the way to go in Civ4. Since in Civ3 you needed to get to Military Tradition and start building Cavalry only to conquer everyone, that's a welcome change.

[Sir Og]

I must have missed this "culture flips got fixed in Civ4". I only know that in one of the exp. packs for civ3 thay added an option to play without cultureflips.
And i thought that culture is out of civ4. Or at least that it is totally reworked.