The main pronlem with Civ 4 is...

[Mujadaddy]

/ditto polarnomad

...the fun of the game is SCRAMBLING for the resources to win, not necessarily having everything handed to you.

And "Balanced" maps? They're balanced, but you're still not guaranteed to get the resource you want---it might not show up on the map at all!!

@OP----you didn't build enough archers, m8

[vee4473]

daddy,

balanced maps are supposed to gaurantee all military resources within x squares of your starting position.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by StarLightDeath
Or here's an amazing idea, you could just take the luck out of the game and make it so everyone gets 1 of each resource without putting them down on the ****ing ice. Then again, apparently I missed the part where luck is supposed to be a huge part of strategy games. Maybe that's why other games get thousands of people playing online at any given time compared to Civ4's amazing 300 people total. Guess you guys still haven't quite figured out how to make a good MP game.

Sounds incredibly boring. if you are averse to challenges or variation, then I can see why you have a difficult time with the game.

[Strudo]

I'm just glad that gunpowder units don't require saltpeter anymore. Not having that was a ball breaker in civ3.

[Mujadaddy]

Originally posted by vee4473
daddy,

balanced maps are supposed to gaurantee all military resources within x squares of your starting position.

Yeah? I thought that balanced maps guaranteed NO IMBALANCE in resources, not that all the resources will be there.... (I've been wrong before though... that one time )

[Sirian]

Originally posted by vee4473
Sirian,

Is a balanced map always pangea?

Yes.

I noticed the balanced type as a map choice, but is there a setting that i'm missing to choose balanced resources on any of the map types?

No. I requested this feature, but the request wasn't granted.

*shrug* Development resources are always limited. Sometimes cool things are missing not because designers didn't think of them, but because other items were given higher priority.

More maps can be made, though, including making some that behave like Balanced but with different land generation.


- Sirian

[Risa]

Originally posted by Handel


Obviously you didn't play at higher difficulties. Or played with barbarians turned off. The earlier resourses are not "that" important. Tha's absolutely true. Because they are ABSOLUTELY important. Without bronze you simply have no chances to research iron working or horse riding. The barbarian axemen will wipe your archers just for few turns.

As for the later resourses - in one of my games I had more 18 cities and had just 1 coal. And I got this coal by pure luck - it was in a desert and the AI didn't build a city there, so my cultural expansion "stole" the coal from the enemy. In the same game I had no oil at all. There was an oil in the sea, but first - you have to research plastics to use sea oil, and second - it was in a culture contested waters, so this square moved in different hands several times.

I guess you play on deity, huh? I have played many maps on monarch and emperor, with raging barbarian, and I didn't need to worry about safety once I had trained several archers. Just fotify them on forest or on hill, then all barbarian are your xp points. There aren't many maps you start with neither copper, iron nor horse. In most of those maps, you will get ivory thus war elephant. Even if without ivory, I haven't seen a single map like that, longbowman isn't unachievable when barbarian swordsman shows up.

[Senethro]

I find it hard to not play on the Balanced map, Thanks to whoever included that maptype. To add some variation to it I just play on a smaller world size and increase the number of AI players, meaning we often steal each others iron/horses through regular expansion.

[Kuciwalker]

Re: The main pronlem with Civ 4 is...

Originally posted by Handel
After a month of Civ 4 playing I found out (at last) what is troubling me with the game. And it is the game is too much "luck dependant". No, don't jump to me at once - it is not because my spearmen killed your battleship, but because of the resourses.

If you had easy access to all resources they wouldn't be strategic.

[Diadem]

@ Sirian

I would really like the option to play balanced on more map types. A checkbox for balanced so it can be played on all maptypes would be best of course, but if that's not possible, at least continent and archipelo maps.

Also, the balanced script seems to be slightly bugged. All resources lie in a certain radius, but this radius seems to be square, while your culture radius is a rough circle. So sometimes resources are spawned in a straight diagonal away from yoru city just outside your maximum (legendary status) culture radius.

In a normal game that's not a problem I guess - just expand. But balanced is a very nice setting for OCC games. And then missing resources after all is ... annoying.

[EdCase]

Originally posted by StarLightDeath
Or here's an amazing idea, you could just take the luck out of the game and make it so everyone gets 1 of each resource without putting them down on the ****ing ice. Then again, apparently I missed the part where luck is supposed to be a huge part of strategy games. Maybe that's why other games get thousands of people playing online at any given time compared to Civ4's amazing 300 people total. Guess you guys still haven't quite figured out how to make a good MP game.

Or maybe because despite the push to make Civ a MP game, a lot of its players have been and always will be looking for the SP experience.
MP is simply a selling point along with strategic sprinkling of the acronym RTS in the advertising designed to bring in "new blood"

[Blake]

In my experience I've had very little trouble holding off "double raging" barbs without copper, horses or iron.

It comes down to being prepared. Found cities on hills. Garrison with 3 archers upgraded with Guerilla, when founding new cities, pre-fortify the hill with 2-3 Guerilla archers.

There's more than one way to skin a barbarian.

[StarLightDeath]

The Balanced map script provides all military strategics to all players, guaranteed.

So here's an amazing idea. If that's what you want, why don't you actually use this option instead of bloviating with the intent to make yourself look good at somebody else's expense?

While I'm on the topic, here's another question for you. Is the Balanced script the most popular map for MP? If not, why not? (It would seem that most MP players are content with the way resources are handled by default. This evidence seems to clash with your theories.)

Who plays balanced map in MP? That is the ****tiest map ever created which ranks up there with ring and wheel, two of Fried's favorite maps. Mirror is the only map that is even remotely good for MP and it has its troubles too. For example, who was the genius who decided to put ice on the tops and bottom of the map but allowed resources to occur there? So while my Egyptian opponent is building a city to use horse and thus has access to his UU I have to travel all the way down to the ice and build a useless city to have access to iron for Praetorians. Good thinking! I also love the classic two coppers and no iron on the entire map. Who was the genius that came up with this one? I would think at this stage of the game after Firaxis ****ed Civ3 up so bad that they would FINALLY figure out this ****, but I guess not. Try taking the name Civilization off this game (anyone who tries to argue this is civilization is kidding themselves) and see how many people actually still play it. If this game didn't have the name civilization on it it would never have even left the shelves.

[Sleestax]

Originally posted by Blake
In my experience I've had very little trouble holding off "double raging" barbs without copper, horses or iron.

It comes down to being prepared. Found cities on hills. Garrison with 3 archers upgraded with Guerilla, when founding new cities, pre-fortify the hill with 2-3 Guerilla archers.

There's more than one way to skin a barbarian.

All fine and good, and while your sitting in your mountain fortress, the barbs are walking around destroying all of your improvements pushing you even further behind the AI.

Once I get above noble, I turn off tech trading and barbs so the game stays somewhat playable.

[Senethro]

Originally posted by StarLightDeath


Who plays balanced map in MP? That is the ****tiest map ever created which ranks up there with ring and wheel, two of Fried's favorite maps. Mirror is the only map that is even remotely good for MP and it has its troubles too. For example, who was the genius who decided to put ice on the tops and bottom of the map but allowed resources to occur there? So while my Egyptian opponent is building a city to use horse and thus has access to his UU I have to travel all the way down to the ice and build a useless city to have access to iron for Praetorians. Good thinking! I also love the classic two coppers and no iron on the entire map. Who was the genius that came up with this one? I would think at this stage of the game after Firaxis ****ed Civ3 up so bad that they would FINALLY figure out this ****, but I guess not. Try taking the name Civilization off this game (anyone who tries to argue this is civilization is kidding themselves) and see how many people actually still play it. If this game didn't have the name civilization on it it would never have even left the shelves.

If I had a stretching from here to Glasgow it wouldn't be big enough for what I'm feeling right now.